The best thank-you sometimes isn’t said. It’s doing the dishes without being asked.

Words are the easy version of thanks, and after enough of them they stop registering. Doing work somebody else would have had to do says the same thing with weight behind it, because it costs you something. It also tends to reach the people who never ask for anything, who are usually the ones doing the most.

Find one job at home this week that nobody assigned you, and do it before anyone notices it needed doing. Bin, dishes, the laundry sitting in the machine. Then say nothing about it. Credit is not the point.