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Kind things you can do on your own
No coordinating, no asking anyone, no waiting for a group. You can do every one of these today without telling a single person you are doing it.
Showing 211–240 of 244 ideas
Give to the unfashionable thing
Money follows stories. Drainage, insurance and boiler repairs raise nothing and close more organizations than anything else.
5 minutesMore than $10A stranger
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 one shopping run for three households
A single trip that collects three lists costs you ten extra minutes and saves three people an afternoon.
An afternoonFreeA neighbor
Tell someone about the mistake you made
Sharing your own error is more useful than any advice, and far rarer, because it costs something to say.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Tell someone their tire is going down
A soft tire spotted in a car park is thirty seconds of mild awkwardness against a blowout at seventy.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
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
Send the criticism privately and the praise publicly
The default is backwards: people praise in private and criticize where everyone can see.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
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
Ask the person crying in public if they are okay
Everyone walks past. The calculation people make — that privacy is kinder — is usually wrong.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
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
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