The library
Kind things you can actually do
Every one of these is specific enough to do today. No grand gestures, no fundraising page, nothing that needs a free weekend.
293 ideas. Try a situation — grief, new baby, neighbor, hospital.
Know roughly what is going on but not what to search for? Start from a situation — fourteen short lists of what actually helps, from somebody new on the street to somebody having the worst year of their life.
Showing 271–293 of 293 ideas
Turn up and do the washing up
In a house dealing with a crisis, the visible undone tasks are a constant reproach nobody has the energy for.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Drive them and wait in the car park
The journey to and from a hospital appointment is often harder than the appointment, and is done alone.
An afternoonFreeA friend
Be the easy customer at closing time
The last half hour of a shift is when tiny inconveniences decide whether someone gets home on time.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Put the courgette glut on the wall
Anyone who grows vegetables ends up with more than they can eat. Most of it is composted rather than offered.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Organize two hours of clearing up
A litter pick is mostly an excuse. Forty neighbors meeting each other is the actual output.
An afternoonFreeA neighbor
Clear the drain outside someone else's house
Ten minutes with a rake in autumn is the difference between a puddle and a flooded front room in the next heavy rain.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Teach the phone thing properly, not quickly
Doing it for them solves today. Teaching it slowly, written down, solves the next two years.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Put a cold box out in a heatwave
Delivery drivers, refuse crews and postal workers do forty-degree days on foot with no realistic way to stop.
5 minutesUnder $10A stranger
Stay friends with both of them
Friendship groups split after a separation, and the person who moved out usually loses everyone.
OngoingFreeA friend
Check on the friend who is visibly fine
Support goes to people who are obviously struggling. The competent ones are assumed not to need any.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Introduce yourself to the neighbor you only nod at
You have lived beside each other for years and exchanged nods. Neither of you can start the conversation in an emergency.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Leave a note for your mail carrier
The person who walks to your door most days almost never hears from the people who live behind it.
5 minutesFreeA stranger2 people did this
Make a hard-day box for a caregiver
The person looking after someone else is usually the last one anybody looks after.
An afternoonMore than $10A caregiver
Bring the trash cans back up
Sixty seconds of your afternoon, and someone comes home to one less thing.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Leave quarters at the laundromat
A few dollars in coins, left on the machines, for whoever counted wrong tonight.
5 minutesUnder $10A stranger
Write the review for the small place
For a business with forty reviews, one more genuinely moves the number. For a chain, it vanishes.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Ask about the person who died
Grieving people are usually far more afraid of their person being forgotten than of being reminded.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Learn the name of someone you see every week
There is probably someone you have exchanged a hundred nods with and never once asked.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Send a specific memory, not a check-in
"Thinking of you" asks for a reply. A memory just hands someone something.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Bring something to whoever has the worst shift
Someone is working Sunday night, the holiday, or the 5am open. They are having a different day than you.
Half an hourUnder $10A friend
Tell someone's manager they were good
Complaints reach managers constantly. Praise almost never does — which is exactly why it carries weight when it arrives.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Do the thing you keep saying you'll do
You already promised, and somebody is quietly still waiting. The kindest thing available today is the thing you have already said you would do.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Be the one who says the obvious thing
In most rooms somebody is being talked over and everyone can see it. Saying so out loud costs you one sentence and changes the room.
5 minutesFreeA friend