A café's storeroom, finally sorted in Southport

I'm in Southport, and I'll be honest: I put this off for far too long. I run a small homewares shop, and the back room had filled up with broken display stands, cartons and stock that wasn't going to sell.

Bent chairs, stacked crates, a rusted bain-marie and boxes of cracked crockery. The fridge was the real problem. It was about two metres tall.

Southport is the Gold Coast's CBD, blending commercial towers, older homes and student housing, and getting things out isn't always simple. We can work around loading zones and timed docks in the CBD core.

When I rang, the person who answered asked a few simple questions about what it was, where it was and how to get to it, and said they could come and look that afternoon.

The crew pulled up, had a look, and told me the price straight away. No surprises, no 'we'll see how it goes'. I said yes and they got started within five minutes.

I couldn't close during the day, so they came at 6pm after trading and had it out by 7:30. They were in and out through the back lane, so no customers were disturbed.

What I appreciated most was that nothing was rushed and nothing was a hassle. They explained where everything was going: charity, recycling or the tip. I felt good about it.

It's a small thing, but having someone else carry it all out made a much bigger difference than I expected.