Machinist here. Plain old blue Dawn dish liquid is the best grease/oil/grime removing hand wash ever. Also good for pre-treating greasy spots on clothing.
Also: use pages of newspaper (yes, with the ink) to wipe windows clean after spraying them with window cleaner. Gets the glass super clean with no streaks.
Enhance store-bought soups by adding your own meats and vegetables to make a great meal quickly. Meat is expensive and tends to be skimped on by the manufacturer, so you can make a canned soup much better and more satisfying by adding more meat yourself.
Pre-cooked meats (ham, grilled chicken, etc) can be added straight to the soup directly as you’re heating it up. If you’re adding raw meat, heat the meat first in water or broth so that you can easily skim any gunk which comes to the surface. If you add raw meat to a soup that has a lot of other stuff in it, you’ll have a lot of trouble skimming it.