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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 61–90 of 162 ideas

• Stand up before anyone has to ask

  Asking for a seat means announcing a pregnancy, an illness or a disability to a carriage of strangers.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• Talk to the person, not over them

  People who are ill or disabled are routinely discussed in the third person while sitting in the room.

  5 minutesFreeA caregiver

• 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

• Stand next to someone being harassed

  Intervening directly can escalate. Standing beside the person and talking to them usually does not.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Warn someone about the ticket they are about to get

  Thirty seconds of effort saves a stranger sixty pounds they very possibly cannot spare.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• 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

• Write down whether a place was actually accessible

  Step-free claims are frequently wrong, and disabled people plan whole days around information nobody has verified.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• Tell the driver you are genuinely not in a hurry

  Taxi and delivery drivers assume every passenger wants speed. Saying otherwise removes a pressure they carry all day.

  5 minutesFreeA stranger

• 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