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Kind things to do from home
From your kitchen table or your front step. Several of these are aimed at people who come to your door regularly and have never been thanked by anyone inside it.
Showing 91–120 of 122 ideas
Find the specific service, not the general advice
Telling someone to get help is useless. Finding the actual local service with opening hours is not.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Keep visiting the widow after the first year
Attention to a bereaved spouse drops sharply after twelve months, which is roughly when the reality lands.
OngoingFreeA neighbor
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
Cook for twelve, invite near-strangers
Adults stop making new friends largely because nobody hosts. A table is the cheapest social infrastructure there is.
An afternoonMore than $10A friend
Set up a standing childcare swap
Two families alternating one evening a month gives both of them something neither could otherwise afford.
OngoingFreeA friend
Take the photograph nobody is taking
In the last months of an illness, families stop taking pictures. Afterwards those are the ones they want most.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Use the dead person's name
People avoid the name to protect the grieving. The effect is that the person disappears from every conversation.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Ask the second question
Most conversations stop at the first answer. The interesting part is one question further in, and almost nobody goes.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Offer a menu, not an open question
'Let me know if you need anything' puts the work of asking onto the person with least capacity to ask.
5 minutesFreeA caregiver
Make the first move after a long silence
Most estrangements are maintained by both sides waiting for the other, each assuming they are the wronged party.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Learn one part of the routine properly
A helper who needs supervising is more work than no helper. Learning one task properly changes that.
An afternoonFreeA caregiver
Leave something out for the refuse crew at Christmas
The crew that has taken your rubbish every week for a year passes your house in the dark in December.
5 minutesUnder $10A stranger
Translate the letter someone cannot read
An official letter in a language you do not read is frightening in a way that is hard to convey.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Offer to do the paperwork after a death
Bereavement comes with dozens of phone calls in which you explain, repeatedly, that someone has died.
An afternoonFreeA friend
Warn the street before the building work starts
Scaffolding and skips are tolerable when you knew they were coming and infuriating when they simply appear.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Do the jobs that need a ladder
Light bulbs, smoke alarms, curtain hooks. A short list of small jobs becomes impossible at the same time.
Half an hourUnder $10A neighbor
Say the compliment you thought but did not say
Most admiring thoughts about people we love are never spoken aloud, on the assumption that they already know.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Tell them the true answer when they ask for one
Reflexive reassurance is easier and less useful. Someone asking properly usually wants the real view.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Ask the carer before you ask about the patient
Every single conversation starts with how the ill person is doing. The carer is asked second, or not at all.
5 minutesFreeA caregiver
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
Record them telling one story
Families consistently say the thing they wish they had is a recording of the voice, not more photographs.
Half an hourFreeA friend
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
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
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
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
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