Summary thus far:
1. When I have a greasy job to do, such as changing the oil in a car, I take some liquid soap and rub it into my hands until it is dry. Then when I finish the job, washing the liquid soap off your hands carries away most of the oil and dirt with minor trouble and much less scrubbing.
2. My clever idea: I didn't fix the hole. Instant defense against tailgaters. They follow too close, I'd have my Cherokee pee on them.
3. Here's mine- when I cut onions I do so with the onion submerged in water-no more tears!
4. My wife and I keep spray bottles around filled with 50:50 rubbing alcohol and water. It's a great cleaner (especially windows, mirrors, counter-tops) and it's really cheap.
5. Make your own fossils by putting fish bones in a bucket of cement. Then leave them out in the garden as a fun weekend activity for children.
6. For removing cat hair from clothes, duct tape wrapped inside-out around a beer can works great.
7. if you need to cut glass without a proper tool you can lay a string soaked in lighter fluid down on it in the pattern you want and light it. A mild tap then supposedly breaks it along the burn line.
8. When I was a kid, my uncle bought me a season ticket for the L.A. Rams games for several years in a row. While learning to maneuver the Coliseum at which we became real pros, I learned that one can cut through any large crowd by holding up a cup of hot coffee and announcing, "Coming through, look out, hot coffee!". For some reason people part like the Red Sea and make room.
9. buy gasoline in the morning when it is cooler, you will get more volume per gallon than if you buy it later in the day when it is warmer and lower density. (May have worked a little a few years ago, but modern gas pumps compensate.)
10. put some vegetable oil on a rag to easily rub off peeled off sticker residue.
11. If you need to cut a cake at a party and need a lot of pieces cut quickly, but neatly, dental floss soaked in water works great. You can make a perfectly straight cut the entire length of the cake.
12. When doing pushups, pause for about 2 seconds at the top each time. This let's blood flow back into your muscles to get oxygen back in (you can feel the whoosh in your arm muscles). You'll be able to do about 50% more pushups with this trick
13. When going on your training runs, take along a GripMaster light tension (4-button) hand exerciser. Gently work the buttons as you run, and switch hands a few times per mile. It's amazing how much easier it makes the run go. Must take your mind off the run or something
14. After learning about brake and throttle control at a racetrack school on my sportbike, and after reading a performance driving book about left-foot braking when driving a car with an automatic transmission, I started using both feet when driving my car. It's amazing how much you can smooth out your driving, cornering, stopping, starting, etc.
15. Read “Out of Wack’s” funny list in post #20.
16. I think I read once that the average person spends almost 24 hours of their lifetime looking for the remote for the TV. Could someone please invent a button on the tv so that when you push it, your remote starts beeping? I'm not sure if this has already been done before.
17. When riding a Harley (and some other bikes, of course) the clutch is swimming in an oil bath. It does not harm the clutch to feather it, and it saves wear on other components if you will feather the clutch to slow, maintain position, and gently resume speed with the clutch only.
18. if you're in a crowded place and you need some room, if you're with others, just say to your friend 'man.. I still can't believe that (insert disease here) test came out positive..' and cough every 30 seconds or so, and in the middle of sentences for added effect. you should get a bit more breathing room after that.
19. The best way to clean the fuzz clogs out of Velcro is to dip it in fish oil and give it to a cat.
20. Never buy fish on a Monday -- not really a clever idea, but good advice
21. Read idea list from the web posted by Art in #39.
21. Here's another one, to keep television screens and computer screens (the old CRT type) from getting too much static and attracting dust, rub a thin film of toothpaste on the screen. (Note that toothpaste is slightly abrasive. It was suggested later to use Vasoline.)
22. I used to be so bad with losing the remote, eventually i just tied it to the tv table with long string.
23. If you have fluorescent fixtures with long-tube-type bulbs (I have some in my shop and garage) and a bulb seems to want to flicker instead of coming up to full brightness, just swipe your fingers along the bulb - that often does the trick.
24. When we lived in a city here, someone kept breaking into vehicles in the lot of the apartment building. I installed a Radio Shack pager alarm in my car. There was no siren or horn in the car, just a transmitter that set off my pager when someone shook it, tried to open the doors, etc, so I could take a run downstairs with my fungo bat.
25. Check out Evo’s post #51
26. My dad's clever idea was to place a spare key in a small metal box with a magnet superglued to it, then hide the box somewhere on the frame under the car. He kept it there for years and hounded on me to do the same after I locked my keys in my car during one of my trips home.
27. Take a look at Integral’s really cool cat box. #57.
Please let me know if I missed any.
