“If you could have any three things, what would you want?”

Eleven-year-old Ruby Kate Chitsey loves asking that question, but it’s not a game she plays at recess（课间）. She asks it at nursing homes in the Harrison, Arkansas, where she lives. Even more amazing, she then sets out to make the residents’ wishes come true.

Ruby Kate often tags along with her mother, Amanda, who works at nursing home in the summer. “I’ve never found them scary at all, so I’m able to just go up to them and ask if they need anything,” she says.

Last May, Ruby K ate noticed a resident named Pearl staring out a window. She seemed sad. “What are you looking at?” Ruby Kate asked. Pearl said she was watching her dog being led away by his new owner after a visit. Pearl didn’t know when she would see her dog again. Pearl was a medicaid recipient, who got only $40 a month to spend on personal items. Ruby Kate and Amanda asked around and discovered that many residents are unable to afford even the smallest luxuries. So Ruby Kate decided to do something about it.

She started by asking residents what three things they wanted most. “That’s a lot simpler than going, ‘Hey, what do you want?’” she explains. “They can understand you better.” Amanda worried that people would ask for things an 11-year-old wouldn’t be able to provide. Instead, they asked for chocolate bars, McDonald’s fries, and even just a prayer.

“It broke me as a human,” Amanda says. “We left the nursing home that day and went straight to a store and bought as many items as we could.”

Using their own money, the Chitseys granted the wishes of about 100 people in three months. Then they started asking for donations. The good people of Harrison responded enthusiastically, and they raised $20,000 in 24 hours and more than $250,000 in five months.

Tidy Up Your Space

Do you often feel upset when you can’t locate your belongings in a messy room? Keeping the things organized in your room can make your space more enjoyable to be in. 【小题1】 Here are some helpful steps to get started.

Consider the benefits

Think of tidying up as treating your belongings with respect. You want to enjoy the items you love. 【小题2】 Consider what you’ll gain by cleaning up. For example, rediscovering an old treasure you’ve forgotten about would be exciting.

Start small

You don’t have to organize your room in one day. That could make you feel stressful. 【小题3】 This could be your nightstand where books have started to pile (堆) up. Once you’ve identified what to organize, start sorting them into three separate piles: one for items you want to keep; another for items you want to donate; and a third one for things that would be recycled or thrown away.

Identify new organizing areas

After you’ve cleared out several spaces in your room, look through the “keep” items that still need to be organized. Use baskets, boxes or other containers to store similar items together. 【小题4】 For example, hair accessories (配饰) could be in a basket near a mirror.

Sort through the rest

Ask an adult to help you go through your piles for donating or for recycling. He or she can help you decide how to deal with them. For example, you may have a family friend with a child younger than you who might like to have the clothes and toys you’ve outgrown. 【小题5】

I am building a tiny house. Not a dollhouse, but a livable space with bed, kitchen, storage-everything you’d need to live.

Why did I decide to build a house? I hoped it would give me skills that really matter in life, such as using tools for construction. And in building the house, I would understand how much labor goes into a home and truly appreciate what I am living in.

But this past year, life gave me a heavy hit: My father, one of my best friends and my tiny house construction partner, died in a traffic accident.

This is where my enthusiasm conics from now: the desire to finish my house for my father. Because of this decision, I now have some life experiences that some adults don’t have. I can relate not only to people who want to build a house, but also to people who have lost a parent. And to all of them, I can say that giving up is not a choice.

Still, without the help of my friends and family. I would probably stop my project. My friend Luke came to help the week after my father died; he knew I needed to get my walls up. The guidance from fellow tiny house builders and their families has been helpful. Putting windows in is no easy. And installing(安装) electricity is not something you do in your dreams. Ten hours of stabbing (戳) your fingers with metal string and getting shocked a couple times is not ideal.

Sometimes when people get a hard knock, they stay down. I didn’t. I didn’t only want to show that anyone can build their own house; I also wanted to show that when I was handed lemons. I not only made lemonade. I made a delicious lemon cake.