Collection
When it turns cold
Cold is the one seasonal thing on this site that is genuinely dangerous. Cold homes cause a measurable share of winter deaths, and a fall on ice at eighty is frequently the start of losing independence for good. Neither of those is dramatic from the outside — they look like somebody keeping the heating off and somebody not going out.
So most of this collection is about noticing rather than doing. The person rationing heating will not mention it, the person who has stopped going outside will not say so, and both are behind the same closed front door as every other winter.
It is worth doing the first three in the first cold week rather than at some point during the winter, because the point of all of them is to get there before something happens.
10 things you can do
In roughly the order they tend to be needed.
The one that matters most and is hardest to ask about. People ration heat in silence and will tell you it is fine.
Check whether the heating is actually on
Many older people ration heating in silence. Cold homes cause a large, measurable share of winter deaths.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Before your own, while you still have the energy for it. The person most at risk on ice is the one least able to clear it.
Clear the path next door before your own
Snow and ice are a broken hip for an older neighbor and an inconvenience for you. The order you clear in matters.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Discounted energy and water tariffs exist for low-income households and almost nobody is on them.
Check whether someone is on a social tariff
Discounted broadband, water and energy tariffs exist for low-income households and take-up is tiny.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Winter is when somebody stopping going out looks exactly like winter. The gap between noticing and anyone checking is usually weeks.
Knock when you realize you have not seen someone
Curtains shut two days running, bins not out, post building up. Noticing is common. Knocking is rare and occasionally decisive.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Wheeling a heavy bin down an icy path is where a lot of falls actually happen.
Do the bins for the house where it is getting hard
Wheeling a heavy bin down an icy path is one of the small tasks that quietly becomes dangerous with age.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Ten extra minutes for you, and three people who do not have to go out on ice.
Do one shopping run for three households
A single trip that collects three lists costs you ten extra minutes and saves three people an afternoon.
An afternoonFreeA neighbor
A lost key in July is an inconvenience. In February it is a night somewhere cold.
Be the person who holds a spare key
Almost nobody has a local key-holder any more, which turns a lost key into a locksmith call and a few hundred pounds.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Storms take the line down, and for anyone working from home that is lost pay.
Offer your wifi when their internet goes down
For anyone working from home, an outage is a lost day of pay. A password shared over the fence gets it back.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Two minutes after a windy collection day, and the street stops looking abandoned.
Put back the bins that blew over
After a windy collection day the street is strewn with other people's bins and rubbish. It takes one person ten minutes.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Sixty seconds. The smallest thing on this page and the easiest to start with.
Bring the trash cans back up
Sixty seconds of your afternoon, and someone comes home to one less thing.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor