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 121–150 of 293 ideas
Pick up what fell out of someone's bag
Gloves, cards, a child's toy. The owner will not discover the loss until it is far too late to retrace.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Check on the one who held it together
At every funeral one person organizes everything. They are the last to be asked how they are, often by months.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Hold the lift for whoever is carrying something
Cleaners, porters and delivery staff with loaded trolleys wait for lifts far longer than anyone with free hands.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
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
Give a visitor the real recommendation
Tourists get sent to the thing on the map. Locals know the version two streets away that is better and cheaper.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Do the thing you already said you would do
An old promise quietly expiring does more damage than a new favor does good. Finish one this week.
An afternoonFreeA friend
Take the appointment nobody wants
The 8am slot, the Friday afternoon, the awkward gap. Someone has to take them, and flexibility is a thing you can give away.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Step aside early on a narrow pavement
Whoever moves first is usually whoever is least able to. Deciding to be the one who moves is free.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Review the small place that is not struggling yet
People review businesses when they are closing or failing. The useful time is before that.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Go back in and say the food was good
Kitchen staff never meet the people who ate what they made. The feedback loop is completely severed.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
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
Write the delivery note before they arrive
Most failed deliveries are a driver guessing. Three sentences of instruction saves a doorstep conversation and a wasted trip.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Warn the parent who has not seen it
A toddler heading for a road or a pond. The parent is two seconds behind and has not looked up.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Take the other end of the pushchair
Stations without lifts turn a pushchair into a trap. One person taking the front end solves it in twenty seconds.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
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
Answer the most junior person first
Inboxes are triaged by seniority without anyone deciding to. Reversing it once a day costs you nothing.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Hand back what the machine gave you by mistake
Money left in a cash machine or an overpaid change is someone's actual money, and they will notice.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Look after the thing they love while they cannot
The plants, the dog, the allotment, the band. Keeping someone's project alive through an illness keeps a version of them alive too.
OngoingFreeA friend
Keep inviting after the diagnosis
People stop inviting the seriously ill to ordinary things, assuming they cannot come. Being asked is the point.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Make the introduction you keep meaning to make
You know two people who should meet. The introduction takes four minutes and you have owed it for months.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Decline to join the pile-on
The hundredth reply telling someone they are wrong adds nothing except to the total weight landing on one person.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Leave the public toilet better than you found it
Someone cleans that room several times a day. Thirty seconds of tidying is the most direct help you can give a stranger.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Take over dealing with one professional
Carers coordinate between GPs, social workers, pharmacies and schools. Owning one of those relationships lifts real weight.
OngoingFreeA caregiver
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
Walk a lost person to the corner
Directions are forgotten by the second turn. Walking someone to the point where they can see it is what works.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Keep answering after they have left
People lose their whole support network when they change jobs, at exactly the point they most need advice.
OngoingFreeA friend
Plan something that is not built around drinking
People in recovery, pregnant, on medication or simply not drinking are excluded from most adult socialising by default.
An afternoonUnder $10A friend
Answer the message you have been avoiding
The longer a reply is owed the harder it gets, and the person waiting has usually assumed something worse than the truth.
5 minutesFreeA friend