No Tinsel Required: Twenty-Four Small Excuses to Knock on a Neighbour's Door This December
Photo: The Big Lunch, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
December is a terrible month for community projects. Everyone is busy, everyone is skint, and anyone suggesting a street party gets the look normally reserved for people proposing a whip-round in the second week of January.
So here is the alternative: twenty-four tiny things. No crafting. No committee. No group chat admin. Nothing that costs more than a smile and, at the outside, 40p.
The idea came from a Toect member in Bexhill who, last winter, wrote the numbers one to twenty-four on the back of an envelope and did one small thing a day. She missed four days. It still worked.
Three rules before you start
Keep it free or nearly free. Keep it under five minutes. And do not expect a thank-you — the point is the gesture, not the receipt.
The calendar
1. Learn one neighbour's name. Then use it, out loud, the next time you see them.
2. Salt the shared path — the strip between your gate and theirs that nobody actually owns.
3. Put the bin out for the house that is away, and bring it back in again.
4. Take in a parcel and leave a note with your door number on it.
5. Knock and borrow something tiny. An egg, a stamp, a screwdriver. Borrowing is a gift: it tells someone they are useful.
6. Lend your stepladder for ten minutes, no questions asked.
7. Leave a spare umbrella by the door with a note: borrow me, bring me back whenever.
8. Send a card to the person who always brings the bins in.
9. Ask for a recommendation — a plumber, a dentist, a decent chip shop.
10. Walk to the shop with whoever is heading that way anyway.
11. Offer your scraper to somebody de-icing their windscreen.
12. Leave a note through the door of the house whose recycling has blown down the street.
13. Give a trusted neighbour your spare key. Yes, really.
14. Drop round half a box of mince pies, on a plate you do not want back.
15. Learn the postie's name and use it.
16. Chalk a good morning on the pavement outside number 14.
17. Invite one person to something you were going to anyway.
18. Offer to wait in for a delivery so a neighbour can leave the house.
19. Ask the person at the bus stop whether they are waiting for the 47 too.
20. Message the group chat: anyone need anything from the shop?
21. Doorstep hello on the shortest day — two minutes, outside, everyone welcome, back indoors by 6.15pm.
22. Pin a note on the community noticeboard listing one thing you are happy to lend.
23. Thank the person who runs the local thing: the quiz, the food bank rota, the lollipop patrol.
24. Leave a note that says only this: your lights look lovely.
What happened when people tried it
Elaine, Bexhill. Her umbrella (day seven) never came back, but the neighbour knocked to apologise, stayed for tea, and now they do each other's shopping on Fridays. Two years of nodding across the road turned into an actual friendship over a £6 umbrella from the garage.
Sam, Sheffield. A parcel note on day four became a WhatsApp group of nine houses. They now share bin days, spare keys, a ladder and, according to Sam, one genuinely excellent plumber. Nobody has organised a single meeting.
The Abergavenny crew. Day twenty-one, the doorstep hello, pulled thirty people onto a pavement for twelve minutes. Mulled apple juice from a flask, one dog, no speeches. It has since become a monthly thing, which nobody planned and everybody likes.
Printing it out
The full calendar is available as a one-page PDF on the Toect noticeboard — print it at the library for about 15p, or copy it onto the back of an envelope like Elaine did. Stick it on the fridge. If you skip day nine, skip day nine. Nobody is marking it.
Add yours
We want this list to grow, and we would rather it grew from real streets than from our imagination. Tell us the micro-gesture that worked on your road — the odd one, the one that sounded silly, the one that got a note back through the letterbox — on the Toect noticeboard or in the comments below. We will fold the best of them into next December's printable, credited to you and your street.
Twenty-four small excuses. That is all it is. Nobody has to make a wreath.
