Listicle

10 Easy Random Acts of Kindness

Making someone else’s day a little easier at no cost to you

Running headlong into a busy day, I made a beeline for the kitchen as I texted my carpool that I was running a little late. I had just realized I hadn’t boiled eggs for breakfast. Sighing in resignation, I pulled open the refrigerator door. I was fairly certain there was some leftover rice in there.

Sticking my face into the cool refrigerated air, I began to forage for the old rice. That’s when I noticed that someone had boiled some eggs and left them in the refrigerator with a note! I grabbed a couple of the eggs and glanced at the clock.

Saved! Suddenly, the busy day ahead of me didn’t seem so chaotic. Just the simple act of boiling some eggs and putting them where they would be found at just the right time saved me time. Instead of being frustrated, I felt like I was going to have a great day!

Just making someone else’s day a little better doesn’t have to take planning, and you don’t have to be a card-carrying member of a movement to make it happen.

How the idea of practicing random acts of kindness became a movement

In 1982 Anne Herbert published a story called “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Acts of Senseless Beauty” in CoEvolution Quarterly, a journal founded by Stewart Brand in 1974. CoEvolution Quarterly was an offshoot of Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, a catalog and counterculture magazine.

After Herbert’s story came out, the idea of practicing random acts of kindness began to spread. According to the website The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, in 1991 a woman saw the phrase written on a wall and told her husband about it. Her husband, a teacher, took the phrase to his 7th-grade students. One of the students had a parent who was a columnist. That parent followed up with an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A book by the title Random Acts of Kindness was released in 1993, and the first Random Acts of Kindness Day took place in February of 1995. That same year, a small non-profit, The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation (RAK), was started in the Bay Area. The foundation is “rooted in the belief that all people can connect through kindness…” Their framework for encouraging kindness is to:

Inspire -> Empower -> Act -> Reflect -> Share

There are a plethora of books about Random Acts of Kindness, written for all kinds of audiences and from different perspectives. Someone who wants to become a part of the “movement” can find tons of ideas for kind things to do.

Kindness through mindfulness

What if one just wants to do something nice for others? What if a random act of kindness is something a person wants to do without being part of a “movement?”

Kindness is more than how we treat others. Kindness is a state of mind. Doing random acts of kindness is a sort of mindfulness practice. Paying attention to our surroundings and grounding ourselves in the moment will allow us to see what needs to be done. With that awareness we can investigate what we can do to help lift another person’s burden.

It doesn’t have to be something you do because you feel like you should. And it doesn’t have to be something you need to research. I am definitely not saying there’s anything wrong with all of that. In fact, you can go to the RAK website and find all kinds of resources.

I’m just saying that if you keep your eyes open, you can find simple, easy, and free things you can do with no planning and very little time to make someone else’s life a little easier.

And they don’t have to even know about it!

Let me give you a small sampling of the kinds of things I mean:

Pick up the little pieces of paper towel that land on the floor in the public bathroom and toss them in the trash - It’s the little corners of paper towel that come off when children or adults in a hurry pull the towels off the dispenser trying to get one or two pieces big enough to dry their hands with. They land on the floor, often without the person who created them even noticing. Then there are the wads and sheets of paper towel that get tossed on the ground instead of making it into the trash. And the ones some folks who don’t like to touch the door knobs sometimes intentionally let fall to the ground. They make the bathroom look bad, but it isn’t the custodian’s fault, and they’re not going to be in this restroom until they’ve finished the one in the front of the store, dumping the trash cans from behind the counters, and crushing the boxes in the back. You can scoop these up and throw them in the can everyone else missed, and the next patrons will be able to open the door without having to push aside the mountain of paper. Don’t like touching paper towels that others have used? No problem — just pull a sheet of paper towel from the dispenser and use it to pick up the stuff from the floor. Easy Peasy.

If you spatter water and soap on the mirror above the sink in the public restroom, wipe it off and dry it — A little water on a paper towel followed up with a dry towel to keep it from streaking will go a long way toward leaving the place where you washed your hands better than it was when you found it. Toss the paper towel in the trash, make sure it went in, and boom! Points! Good job!

If you’re walking down the aisle in the grocery store, and you see a box of crackers (or whatever) lying on the floor where someone knocked it down, pick it up and set it with the rest of the crackers, neatly faced — Whether it’s a box of crackers, a can of soup, or a package of ramen noodle, pick it up off the floor and set it on the shelf where it belongs. Take time to find the correct location, and you’ll save the stocker some time and possibly even keep the food item from getting kicked across the building like a soccer ball.

After you unload your groceries, take the cart to the corral and push it in with the others — This is a thing that conscientious and compassionate people do. It’s usually only a few steps, and it will save the employees time and energy if the carts are all in the corrals where they belong when they come outside to round them up. That, and you’ll get a little extra exercise by taking it over there yourself. Plus, they simply don’t get paid enough to have to chase down the carts and gather them from all over the lot.

If you go into the break room at work and see that someone apparently tossed their dirty paper plate and a crumpled up napkin in the trash, but missed, pick it up and throw it in the bin — It doesn’t take much to bend over, pick up the items, and toss them in the trash. Use a clean piece of paper towel or gloves to pick it up if it grosses you out. Sure, you could leave it there in hopes that the person who missed the first time will pick it up on their own. Their return to the room on the same day isn’t guaranteed, and it’s likely they don’t realize they dropped the trash just short of making it into the trash can. Keep leaving things like that, and you’ll have a nasty archaeological site on your hands.

If while in the break room you see where someone spilled something on the counter and walked away, grab a paper towel and wipe it up — Clean up with a damp sheet of paper towel, followed up with a swipe of a dry towel will work wonders, and the break area will be much more pleasant. No, you’re not your coworkers’ mom, and their mom probably doesn’t even live or work there, but someone has to be the responsible one. Sometimes, let it be you.

When eating at a restaurant, as you finish your plates, scrape any leftover food onto one plate and stack them together with the silverware on top; set them at the end of the table where the server or bus person can easily pick them up when they come to offer you a refill on your coffee or iced tea — Sometimes servers or bussers will come to pick up the plates when you set your fork down after that last bite. However, at other times, they are a little busy and don’t get to your table right away. When this happens, you’re left with a dirty, empty plate in front of you while you wait to order that slice of tiramisu and another glass of Chardonnay. If you clean it up and set it all on the end of the table, your server is likely to see that you’re ready, and you will have set the dishes ready to be picked up and placed into a bus tub or carried to the dishwasher station without the server having to scrape and stack. It helps them, and you’ve got a clean place in front of you for that glass of wine and the plate of sugar.

When you go for a walk around the block, take a trash bag with you and pick up trash you see along the way, then throw the trash away when you get home — The good you’re doing here is for the environment; it’s also for the neighborhood. If nobody ever picks up the trash that comes blowing into the neighborhood on the wind and settles along the sides of fences and along the street curbs, the neighborhood could soon turn into a giant midden or a dump. Then what will you do? Wait for the archaeologists of some far-future time to dig it up and judge you and your neighbors? If you don’t want to pick up trash with your bare hands, they make gloves for that.

If you have an elderly neighbor who likes to get a little chatty, spend some time with them, ask them how they’re doing, and truly listen to them when they tell you — Sometimes it’s hard to stand at the gate with an older neighbor while they tell you about their grandchildren, dogs, and that one time when they drove cross-country with just a suitcase and half a tank of gas. It can be difficult, but all you need is a little bit of patience, compassion, and curiosity. Listen: you never know what you’ll learn!

If you’re feeling in a bit of a rush and a little annoyed because the line at the store is longer than you’d hoped and you want to snap at the cashier because they’re slow and you’ve waited a long time, don’t — It’s not their fault. Clearly the store is understaffed and the cashier is likely overwhelmed. When it’s your turn, just smile and say “thank you” for the help the cashier is giving you. This won’t hurt you any, and you won’t add one more brick to the already overburdened cashier’s load.

It’s the little things

These seem like silly little things, the kind of things that we might miss if we aren’t looking. It may seem like they are so small that nobody will even notice. That’s part of the point. The janitor may not realize that they didn’t have to clean up those little pieces of paper towel, because they didn’t even know they were on the floor. Still, you have saved them a bit of the work they would have had to do, and by doing so, you’ve made their load just a tiny bit lighter.

You can feel good about it, but it’s not so big as to puff you up with pride for being so kind and generous. It took very little out of your day but saved just the teeniest bit of time for the hard-working server or grocery store stocker.

Will these little things and all the other little things like them make a huge difference in the world?

Perhaps not, but they just might make a difference in someone’s day.

Maybe even yours.