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If I don't know the kanji of a thing but I know the hiragana of it, can I just
write the hiragana if I have to write it down? Is it a free choice? Or some
rules or social formalities?
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kanji hiragana
The role of hiragana when there is a relevant kanji?
If you write a thing in hiragana that should be written in kanji, it looks
like a kid who didn't know kanji so much wrote it. There's no rigid rule
whether you use kanji or hiragana, but you should use kanji in something
formal. And it's better to use kanji even in informal texts.

but there are some exceptions. If the kanji of the things is difficult to
write even for Japanese, we usually write them in hiragana or katakana. ex)
rose is 薔薇(bara) in kanji, but it's hard even for Japanese to remember the
kanji, so we usually write ばら.
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First, as @TheWanderingCoder states, sometimes hiragana can be ambiguous. `かみ`
can be `神`(God), `紙`(Paper), or `髪`(Hair) for example. So Kanji is required
here to understand the intended meaning, even though there are situations
where it is understood from context.

**To answer your questions**

# Can I just write the hiragana if I have to write it down?

Most of the time, **yes** as people will understand from context. I've seen
people write `会議` as `会ギ` on whiteboards before because `議` is a pain to
write.

Be careful though, a big glob of Hiragana/Katakana is hard to read. Japanese
speakers (readers?) "chunk" the text by Kanji, so too much Kana will take them
longer to read.

# Is it a free choice? Or some rules or social formalities?

1) There are modern preferences that exist, for example `おいしい` is often
written in Hiragana and not as `美味しい`. You can experiment with your preferred
style as the choice can give a different persona, particularly when
chatting/texting. Heavy use of Hiragana can come off as young and sometimes
feminine.

2) Take this phrase that you will write at the bottom of every business email
you write in Japanese `よろしくおねがいいたします`.

Quickly looking through my emails, the following patterns all occur:

  * `よろしくお願いいたします`
  * `よろしくお願い致します`
  * `宜しくお願い致します`

The top being the least formal and the bottom being the most. Note though, the
difference in formality is not that big. If I get an email with the 1st
pattern vs the 3rd, it's not an insult or anything like that.

I'm pretty sure I've seen `宜しく御願い致します` before too, which would be even more
formal.

I personally use `よろしくお願い致します`, but on formal/serious emails I will use
`宜しくお願い致します`.
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Quoting from `mirka`'s final comment in  
[How can one stop “去年教職” from looking like a weird 4 kanji
compound?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/27983/how-can-one-
stop-%E5%8E%BB%E5%B9%B4-%E3%81%8D%E3%82%87%E3%81%AD%E3%82%93-%E6%95%99%E8%81%B7-%E3%81%8D%E3%82%87%E3%81%86%E3%81%97%E3%82%87%E3%81%8F-from-
looking-like-a-weird-4-kanji-compound)

> Kanji/hira/katakana is a pretty deliberate choice, especially in writing
> intended for publication (speaking from my experience in the industry).
> Sometimes it's to stop a secondary kanji from “sticking out” (食べ始める→食べはじめる),
> sometimes it's to alter the nuance of a word (かれ/彼/カレ, よみがえる→蘇る). They all
> change the “feel” to the reader, and it's one of the things that make
> Japanese such an expressive language.
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