#7: Help

Love Your Neighbor Challenge

When my husband was injured in a home accident, our neighbors helped us in more ways than one. When one neighbor shouted for help, another came running with her husband – who is also a doctor. An emergency room nurse who lived one street over offered to make a house call, and another neighbor brought still-warm brownies when she learned what happened. As he recovered at home, a neighbor kindly stopped jackhammering their patio so he could rest.

Today you will HELP a neighbor in the Love Your Neighbor Challenge.

You’re going to have to get outside your home to do a neighbor a favor, so plan on lingering in the front yard more than usual. Always ask for permission, then be on the lookout for these ways to help.

How to Help Your Neighbor: 20 Ways

Call a neighbor the next time you’re going to the grocery store, post office, hardware store, or mall and offer to pick up any items they might need. Better yet, invite them to come along.
On a rainy day, deliver your neighbor’s newspaper or mail to her door with a plate of cookies—or a card that says, “Stay warm and dry!”
Carry your neighbor’s trash cans back to their house
Carpool to work together
Take the neighbor kids to school on cold or inclement days
Be available for latchkey kids for an hour or two after school. Make them a snack and ask about their homework.
Share your wireless internet connection (make sure this isn’t against your internet service provider’s terms of service)
Help carry in groceries
Rake and bag their leaves in the fall
Weed your neighbor’s flowerbeds, water their lawn or help them plant flowers

Mow their lawn, then go the extra mile and trim the edges
Shovel their sidewalk, driveway and porch, and sprinkle with salt if they’d like
Scrape the frost off their car on a cold morning
Share the dandelion spray—no one wants a yard full of weeds, but some neighbors might not know how to get rid of them or be able to afford it
Listen long. Listen way past your comfort zone. You don’t have to solve their problems, just hear their heart.
Teach a skill like cooking, sewing, scrapbooking, gardening
Lend a tool or a book without expecting it back
Help with a home improvement project
Take them a meal if they’re sick—or for no reason at all!
Share coupons you aren’t using (or sacrifice ones you would like to use)

Kindness makes you cool

Researchers at the University of British Columbia asked people to perform six random acts of kindness per week such as holding open doors, buying a friend’s lunch, or donating to charity. Participants reported that after four weeks they felt less anxiety in general, more comfortable approaching people, and had greater confidence in social interactions.

This works for neighbor kids, too: Middle school students who performed three kind acts a week for four weeks were happier and more popular at school—even though they did their kindnesses outside of school.

Don’t forget to ask for help: Ask if you can borrow an ingredient or a tool, or ask for a helping hand with a household task. Dependence is a hallmark of community, not an admission of weakness.
How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird, page 65

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If these tips and tools have given you a new idea, if you’ve met a new neighbor or thought about your neighbors in a different way, would you please let me know?

Contact me or message me on Instagram or Facebook. I’d love to hear your stories!