h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Before motor maintenance, or other work where you may come in contact with dirty oil, rub cheap moisturiser into your hands, making sure you work plenty under your fingernails, and let it soak in. Wipe off any greasy excess before starting work to preserve your grip.
Getting cleaned up afterwards is massively easier, especially under the nails.

A useful solvent for safely removing label adhesives from many surfaces, screen cleaning, etc is propanol - see http://www.h2g2.com/A226522

Having once been plagued by wasps, I suggest that if you're trying to swat a particularly nasty-looking wasp or hornet, and don't want to risk just batting it around and making it angry, roll up a newspaper, then wind some sellotape around and around one end, sticky side out.

Hold the non-sticky end. If you do manage to get a good hit, you don't have to crawl around looking for the stunned insect. With this tool, it's also very easy to remove angry wasps from the inside of lampshades, even if you're half-asleep at the time. (Trust me.)

If the child is too young to watch TV for more than about an hour you're going to have to amuse the little sprog.

Some handy toys are things that make a lot of noise.

Get an empty plastic pop/soda bottle and put some stones/dried beans/rice in it and screw the top on tight. Give it a good shake before giving it to the ankle biter and they'll enjoy playing with it for about 30 secs.

Get a sock and put it on your hand. Push the toe end back into the inside of your hand and pretend its a snake. Your thumb is the bottom jaw. Make it talk - the little ones don't even care that your lips are moving.
If you're good they'll be scared stiff.

Get out your biggest saucepan and a wooden spoon and sit the child down with saucepan upside down between their legs. Gently touch the top of the saucepan with the wooden spoon to see if you can get a quiet little "dink" from it. Give spoon to child, put on ear defenders and stand well back.

Michaels Game - for children old enough to draw without poking themselves in the eye with somehting sharp.
Invented by my son, Michael.

Need piece of blank paper, pen or pencil.

Draw two parallel lines across the paper separateing the sheet into equal thirds.

Name each third according to a set scene. I.e top is sky, middle is sea bottom is beach. Then take it in turns drawing things while the other person has to guess what you have drawn. The item you draw should be normally found where you have put it on the paper. Planes in the sky, boats on the water dog doo on the beach etc.

You can have different versions of this sky/jungle/river and so on.

I'll think of some more and come back

Another way to avoid the noise of a dripping tap is to use a piece of thick twine (~5mm thick). Fold a couple of inches back from one end, and push the doubled-up end up inside the tap. As long as the rest of the string isn't too stiff to hang vaguely vertically, the water will run silently down to the sink.

There was some mention of odd socks.
What you do is wait 'til you're completely out of clean socks. Define clean as "has been worn since it was last washed". Now, you collect all of the socks, and throw them in a pile. Because they are all together, it shouldn't take long to decide which ones have been genuinely lost. These poor partnerless ones must then be discarded, reducing the load on your suffering washing machine.
Now you have good socks to wear, you are able to wear shoes without getting blisters. Quality footwear is essential if you are clearing up after particularly messy social events, because you don't have to keep stopping to wonder what unpleasant, cold, squidgy and unnervingly long-term stain it was that you just put your foot in, but can just get on with the job of napalming the place to get it presentable again.
So - get your socks sorted, and everything else becomes much easier.

If you live in a water-metered house, leave a brick in the water-tank of your toilet. That way, the density of the brick means that less water is filled into the tank, and less water is used to flush the loo, and overall, less money is wasted.
If you are really stingy, you can use newspapers as toilet paper like they did in the way.

Another obvious way to save water is to leave bottles under taps....

Stale bread gets stains off wall paper.
And if you have grease stain on a piece of clothing put paper towel underneath and on top of the stain and apply a hot iron; The towel soaks up the gunk you dropped/dribbled.

The best way to get blue-tac off walls? Why, simply use more blue-tac and roll it over the old tac.

A better way to avoid odd socks is to buy copious quantities say of the same black socks 10 pairs enough for two working weeks. You can wear other pairs on weekends if you so desire. Eventually you may end up with one sock of your mass buy but there is never any worry about picking up an odd apir of socks.

Great tip for removing tight rings: Use hand cream, not only do you get the ring off but your hands smell!!

On that Kool-Aid bit, I've also used it to remove the corrosion from brass. Mix up a strong batch (minus the sugar) and toss in your brass for a few hours, and then scrub away the loose green junk with a wire brush.

Here's a few tips I stole from "The Bachelor Home Companion" by PJ O'Rourke, for amusement purposes:

"Insulation: Rolls of fiberglass should be handled carefully because fiberglass can irritate the skin. Cover your face and limbs, wear gloves, and a hat. When you've got all this on you'll be warm and won't need insulation."

"Painting: Preparation is vital in painting. Be sure that whatever is going to get paint on it is properly prepared. What's going to get the most paint on it is you. So you'd better have a drink."

"The bedroom: Sheets can be kept clean by getting drunk and falling asleep with all your clothes on."

"Changing light bulbs: You have to have the right equipment, which is, in this case, light bulbs. So you go to the store, buy a six-pack, cigarettes, the paper, Cheez Doodles, an auto swap guide, a new Bic, forget the light bulbs, come home, and sit in the dark."

"Worchestershire sauce: a boon for spoilage control. Makes meat that's a bit off taste like meat that's a bit off in an expensive restaurant."

"The kitchen: every kitchen should be equipped with a dishwasher, preferably a cute one wearing her apron and nothing else."

For most annoying things the answewr is Zen.
Learn to meditate and then the dripping tap sounds like music, the hole in the roof allows you to see the sky and the flat tyre on your car allows you to get some fresh air while walking.

I once saw kit in print that a woman used to put her coat on to answer the door. If it was someone she really didn't have time for she said, "Sorry, as you can see I'm just going out!"
If it was someone she liked she said, "Hello, come in I've just got home."

Baking soda is an excellent general cleaner. Pick up some on the wet dish cloth to scour Corningware or other ceramic oven ware. Its non-abrasive for cleaning a ceramic-top stove, makes counter tops and the sink shine. It will also keep nasty smells out of the fridge when you have a mould experiment going on in the far left corner of the bottom shelf.

It may work great, but then your home will smell like a giant douche.

Blue Peter said it first but...
remove the plastic bit at the top of the washing up liquid bottle and then straight across the bottle about a half way up lastly cut again 2.5cm (1 inch) below where the slope joins the upright part of the bottle and discard the ring of white plastic.

Invert the top (which looks a bit like a funnel) and fit it neatly into the bottom.

Fill the newly made "thingy" with water and give it to the kids when they want to paint with water colours or poster paints. They can use it for cleaning their brushes and if you don't put too much water in it they can tip it over and no water comes out! Amazing!

Hair spray - the cheaper the better - will take blallpoint pen ink out of fabric. Just spray it on, leave a few minutes, then wash as usual. It will take the ink out.