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Kind things to do for a neighbor

For the people on your street. Proximity does most of the work here — you already know more about their week than you realize, and they about yours.

Showing 1–30 of 60 ideas

• Read the form out loud for someone

  Around one in six adults reads below the level most official forms are written at.

  Half an hourFreeA neighbor

• Offer to take another child as well

  You are already doing the trip. One more in the car is the cheapest help a parent can give another parent.

  Half an hourFreeA neighbor1 person did this

• Go to the celebration that is not yours

  Turning up to somebody else's festival, service or national day is a bigger gesture than it costs you.

  An afternoonFreeA neighbor

• Invite the new family twice

  The first invitation is often declined out of uncertainty. The second is the one that establishes it was real.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• 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

• Ask someone to teach you their food

  Being asked to share something from home reverses the usual direction, where the newcomer receives and thanks.

  An afternoonUnder $10A neighbor

• Be a reliable adult for a child who is not yours

  Every resilient childhood account includes at least one adult outside the family who was consistently there.

  OngoingFreeA neighbor

• Move your bin off the pavement

  Bins, bikes and parked cars narrow pavements to the point where a wheelchair has to go into the road.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• Quietly pay for a child's kit

  The boots, the instrument, the trip. Children drop out of things because of cost, and nobody is told why.

  5 minutesMore than $10A neighbor

• Return it better than you got it

  The borrowed car with a full tank, the returned dish with something in it. The margin is what people remember.

  Half an hourUnder $10A neighbor

• Hand over your good tradesperson

  The reliable plumber, the honest garage, the dentist taking patients. Newcomers pay a premium for not knowing.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• Explain how the system here actually works

  Registering with a doctor, council tax, school places. Obvious to you, opaque and consequential to a newcomer.

  An afternoonFreeA neighbor

• Ask again the person who always says no

  People who decline every invitation are usually not uninterested. Often they are waiting to be asked a fourth time.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• Return the thing you have had for two years

  Everybody is holding something borrowed and mildly embarrassing. Giving it back is easier than the story you have built around it.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• 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

• Ring at the same time every week

  A call that arrives predictably becomes something to look forward to. A random one is just a call.

  OngoingFreeA neighbor

• 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

• Start the street group, and keep it about the street

  A neighborhood group is genuinely useful for about six months and then becomes a place people argue about parking.

  An afternoonFreeA neighbor

• Write an actual letter

  A letter can be reread, shown to visitors and kept on the mantelpiece. A text cannot do any of those things.

  Half an hourUnder $10A neighbor

• 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

• Put your number through a door

  Most neighbors have no way to reach each other. One card through a letterbox fixes that for years.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• 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

• Bring tools out when someone is moving in

  Moving day is the one day a household owns everything and can find nothing. A screwdriver at the right hour is remembered for years.

  Half an hourFreeA neighbor

• 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

• Find out who is on their own at Christmas

  People will not volunteer that they have nowhere to go. The question has to be asked directly and early.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• Learn the dog's name first, then the owner's

  The dog is the easiest introduction on any street, and the one conversation nobody finds intrusive.

  5 minutesFreeA neighbor

• Ask an older person to teach you something

  Being useful is the thing most often lost in older age. Being taught is a better gift than being helped.

  An afternoonUnder $10A neighbor

• Become a regular somewhere on purpose

  Being known by name in one place is the cheapest antidote there is to feeling like a stranger where you live.

  OngoingUnder $10A neighbor

• Go to the appointment as a second pair of ears

  People retain very little of what a doctor says, especially when the news is bad or the room is rushed.

  An afternoonFreeA neighbor

• Ask an older person what they used to do

  Retired people are asked about their health and their grandchildren. Almost nobody asks what they were good at.

  Half an hourFreeA neighbor