We could only get it sofa!

Today's mission was to move a sofa out of the lovely Mrs J's flat so that it can be picked up by the council tomorrow.

To prepare myself for this task, I googled the average weight of a sofa and decided that I believe in the power of positive thinking. I'm not so sure that the universe agrees with me, as it took this opportunity to replace the quick link I had to tfl in my browser homepage with a quick link to these search results (thus reminding me every single day since I signed up to this mission exactly what I'd committed myself to 😬).

With an eye to a potential pun for this mission report, I elected to run the 5k from my office to the couch-based mission (5k-to-couch). This wasn't my most sensible idea given the 32° heat and my penchant for wearing thick black running tights regardless of the weather. I reminded myself, however, that lots of Goodgymers were out doing group runs tonight, and gritted my teeth through it.

On arrival, I met with today's mission buddy, Eva. Eva's been part of Goodgym for well over 2 years, and has been doing missions for over a year. I felt confident that, combined, we were a spatial reasoning dream team, ideal for tackling this task.

After an enthusiastic welcome from Mrs J, we sized up the sofa. It was a 3 seater leather beast that I'm going to assume was more than the average weight I'd googled. We quickly realised that we needed to remove the legs if we were going to have any chance of getting it through the door, so Eva hot footed it to a neighbouring flat to borrow a screwdriver. Less than 10 minutes later, we were making the legless sofa undergo movements that a contortionist would have envied and successfully got it out of the flat.

It was around this time that Mrs J's nephew arrived. With his help, we attempted to get the sofa both into the lift and into the stairwell. It was a no-go on both fronts. We (Eva) undid some of the internal screws in the sofa, but they obviously built things to last in the 90's, as the glue continued to hold the sofa firmly together.

Ultimately, the best we could manage was to find a corner in the hallway for the sofa that didn't impede access to any fire exits. (Total props to Eva for working out the best configuration for this - Mrs J's nephew referenced her obvious Tetris skills 😀)

So, in Goodgym pun-lance, our mission resulted in only being able to get the couch sofa(r). Mrs J was positive about our efforts though, and treated us (aka her "babies" 😍😍😍) to an iced tea, some popcorn and lavender bubble bath (definitely needed after grappling with that sofa in this heat!) She was confident that the building management would help break up the sofa for her so that it can be taken down the rest of the way (potentially another Goodgym mission! :D)