Nat Locke: Moving a big old rug onto my verge was a feat worthy of SAS Australia. Jason Akermanis could never

When you’re a single woman about town, you have to learn to cope in circumstances where, traditionally, a second pair of hands might be handy. Cue Kelly Clarkson’s Miss Independent.

For example, when you’re putting flat-pack furniture together, the instructions are very insistent that it’s a two-person job.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve brazenly defied those pictogram instructions that have a giant cross through the solo person, and an even bigger tick next to the pair of people. It turns out, my friends, that it is actually possible for one woman to do a two-man job. Also, there is considerably less arguing about what the instructions actually mean, and even less chance of the instructions being screwed up and thrown into the bin in frustration. In my experience, at least.

And this week, life threw me another opportunity to demonstrate my single capabilities when the rest of humanity would have said “Hey Nat, maybe you should get someone to help?”

Never!

You see, it was verge pick-up week in my neighbourhood. You know, when cars trawl up and down every street at an agonisingly slow pace, peering at mountains of junk on the verge.

I even saw one guy who had clearly rented a ute for the purpose (on account of the massive “Rent Me” sign on the door), so confident was he that he would find enough treasures to justify the expense.

Anyway, I had a rug to get rid of. Not just any regular rug. This was a big rug. It took up most of the floor space in my lounge room, and had a couch, a television unit, three chairs and two coffee tables on top of it.

In my greatest act of optimism, I bought a mostly cream rug for a high-traffic area, and then watched as it rapidly turned grey. A tragic carpet indeed.

After three years of muddy pawprints, spilled gin, some minor bleeding, and more than one episode of cat vomit, I conceded that there was not enough spot cleaning in the world that could make that rug look good again. And so, I bit the bullet and bought one of those rugs that I can apparently put in a washing machine. Not my washing machine, evidently, but one of those heavy-duty ones at a laundromat.

Side note: I haven’t been to a laundromat since I was at university. Is it still $1.60 for a wash?

Anyway, with the new rug arriving imminently, the old rug had to go.

Somehow, I managed to drag it from under all the furniture, which was a difficult enough proposition. But then I had to find a way to roll it up so I could drag it down my ridiculously long hallway, down the front steps and out onto the verge. Seriously, this should be a challenge on SAS Australia. Jason Akermanis would have crumbled under that pressure, too.

Let’s just say it’s lucky I go to the gym. There was a lot of squatting, grunting and swearing, but ultimately, I got that damn thing onto the verge, whereupon it ceased to be my problem.

Although my verge was filling up fast, because (a) it’s really quite narrow and (b) I share it with my rear neighbours. They had already thrown out a broken wooden chair and a giant lead pencil, so it was a high-stakes game.

The trawlers had already done a couple of turns up my street and had taken two baby seats and a barbecue from across the road, but the box of coat hangers I had left out remained untouched. This intrigued me, naturally. Don’t people hang their clothes up any more?

And would anyone take an exorbitantly large, quite filthy rug? Well, the answer is: absolutely.

It was gone before I got home from the dog park. Presumably, two people spied it and immediately hefted it into their rental ute. I only hope that it’s gone to someone who loves those carpet-cleaning videos and wants to give it a shot in the comfort of their own home. Or it’ll be for sale at the Melville markets on Sunday.

Either way, the council doesn’t have to pick it up and I don’t have to look at it ever again. I think that’s what’s known as a win-win.