Roll Out the Welcome Wagon

Greet your new neighbors with a homemade housewarming gift. You’ll make a new connection and help them feel more at home. Good neighbors can last a lifetime and bring a real sense of community on a daily basis.

Random Acts of Roses

Use your flower power: go to the local discount store and pick up some small vases. Add a ribbon, some freshly picked flowers, and deliver the arrangements to elders at a local community center, nurses in the ER, or anywhere you know people can use little random acts of roses.

Have a Good Neighbor Policy

If you live next to an elderly couple or someone who is disabled, volunteer to help them around their yard by raking their leaves or mowing their lawn. Consider it good exercise and a good deed.

A Friendly Eye

Offer to take care of a neighbor or friend’s home, yard, or pets while they are away on vacation. They will be comfortable knowing their valuables are in good hands.

Can I Grab That For You?

    Every Sunday night, when you go to take out your own garbage and recycling, knock on your neighbor’s door and offer to take hers out, too. You might even be invited in for tea and cookies, as I was!

Roll Out the Welcome Wagon

    Greet your new neighbors with a homemade housewarming gift. You’ll make a new connection and help them feel more at home. Good neighbors can last a lifetime and bring a real sense of community on a daily basis.

A Friendly Eye

Offer to take care of a neighbor or friend’s home, yard, or pets while they are away on vacation. They will be comfortable knowing their valuables are in good hands.

Spend Your Money in Your Own Neighborhood

    Support local agriculture and business by purchasing produce or baked goods from farmer’s markets. By doing so, you ensure that your fresh food is organically grown and isn’t imported from another state or country-the cost of shipping is a contribution to greenhouse gas and pollution. Every dollar you spend locally will go a long way toward supporting your local economy and your next-door neighbors.

The Helpful Hand

    Every Sunday night, when you go to take out your own garbage and recycling, knock on your neighbor’s door and offer to take hers out, too. You might even be invited in for tea and cookies, as I was!

The Good Neighbor Policy

    Bring your neighbor's newspaper to their front door and leave a plate of homemade muffins and a bottle of hand sanitizer next to it.

Have a Good Neighbor Policy

    If you live next to an elderly couple or someone who is disabled, volunteer to help them around their yard by raking their leaves or mowing their lawn. Consider it good exercise and a good deed.

Roll Out the Welcome Wagon

Greet your new neighbors with homemade housewarming gifts, like masks or brownies. You'll make a new connection and help them feel more at home. Good neighbors can last a lifetime and bring a real sense of community on a daily basis.

Be a Fixer-Upper (Plus Weeding is Good Therapy)

    Assist seniors near you with tasks like raking, shoveling, or doing minor home repairs through Volunteers of America's Safety of Seniors Handyman Program (voa.org). I pull my 98-year-old neighbor's weeds and it is a good exercise for me, it benefits the neighborhood, and she appreciates the weekly attention she and her yard enjoy!

Reach Out

     The holidays can be an intensely lonely time. I remember when I first arrived in San Francisco and really had nowhere to go. Kindly folks invited me to Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I made new friends, ate marvelous dinners, and was so grateful. I try to do the same now that I have a home I can share. Look around and see whom you can invite over. This is a lovely tradition among my group of friends and is, I truly believe, what the holidays are really supposed to be about.