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Kind things to do in your neighborhood

Within walking distance. Most of these are for people you half-know: the faces you recognize on the same street every week and have never actually spoken to.

Showing 31–60 of 162 ideas

• Buy the work rather than praising it

  Artists, writers and makers get a great deal of encouragement and very little income. One is a great deal more useful.

  5 minutesMore than $10A friend

• Ask before you help, then do what they say

  Grabbing a wheelchair or an arm without asking is both dangerous and startlingly common.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• 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

• Say keep the change before they count it

  A small overpayment is worth more as a decision you announce than as coins you leave behind.

  5 minutesUnder $10A stranger

• Tell a young person about your own failure

  Young people assume competent adults were always competent, which makes their own struggle feel disqualifying.

  5 minutesFreeA friend

• 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

• Move your trolley out of the aisle

  A blocked aisle is an inconvenience to most people and an impassable wall to a wheelchair or a scooter.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• 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

• Leave credit on the machine behind you

  A parking meter, a laundry card, a photo booth. The next person gets a small unearned piece of luck.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• Split the bill by what people can actually pay

  Dividing equally is simple and quietly excludes whoever ordered the cheapest thing for a reason.

  5 minutesUnder $10A friend

• Give one instruction at a time

  Stacked instructions fail for anyone tired, anxious, learning the language or processing differently.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• Say plainly that you are glad they came

  Anyone new spends months privately unsure whether they are wanted or merely tolerated. One sentence settles it.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• 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

• Pay a bit more at the place that employs people

  The difference between the independent and the chain is usually small per item and decisive per year.

  Half an hourUnder $10A stranger

• 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

• Let the car out

  Someone has been waiting at that junction for four minutes. It costs you eight seconds and they remember it.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• Notice the teenager who is doing the caring

  Hundreds of thousands of children care for a parent or sibling, and most are invisible to their school and neighbors.

  OngoingFreeA caregiver

• 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

• Hand in the thing you found, properly

  A dropped wallet or phone handed to the right place is the difference between a bad afternoon and a ruined month.

  Half an hourFreeA stranger

• Sit in the waiting room with someone

  Waiting rooms are where people rehearse the worst version of the news. Company changes the hour entirely.

  An afternoonFreeA friend

• Do the garden of a house that has stopped managing it

  An overgrown garden is usually a signal — illness, age, or a household with no spare capacity at all.

  An afternoonFreeA caregiver

• Invite the child everyone stops inviting

  Parents of disabled children describe the birthday party invitations drying up as the loneliest part.

  5 minutesFreeA caregiver

• Visit the resident nobody comes for

  Every care home has people who receive no visitors at all. Staff know exactly who they are.

  OngoingFreeA stranger

• 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

• Buy the last of it at the end of market day

  Unsold fresh produce at four o'clock is a loss the trader eats. Buying it is a favor disguised as a bargain.

  Half an hourUnder $10A stranger

• Take back two trolleys instead of one

  Collecting trolleys in the rain is somebody's whole shift. Two at a time halves a specific, miserable job.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• Take the other child out

  When one child is seriously ill or disabled, their brothers and sisters become invisible to every adult around them.

  An afternoonUnder $10A caregiver

• Fix the wrong thing on the map

  Wrong opening hours send someone across town for nothing. Anyone can correct them and almost nobody does.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger