The Home improvement Book

This book contains a veritable treasury of helpful instruction and advice

A handbook for everyday life with more than 4,000 time saving and cost saving tips for the home. Its pages are packed with shortcuts, practical advice, ingenious ideas, how-to information, and more than 1,000 illustrations

This book first came out in 1988 and has been in my general "how-to" library ever since. Updated and reprinted in 1994, it is still one of the most extensive household help books I know. It has tips on organizing your home, cleaning, repairing things, gardening, caring for pets, even record-keeping and decorating! Well organized, well indexed, and easy to use, this book is packed with a whole lot of information on practical matters of living, and you'll find yourself keeping it within easy reach! 

it is, of course, dated since this hasn't been published since the early 90s, but it's still very relevant. I'd give a rough estimate that about 3% of the information is too dated to be useful and about 2% is dated enough that you could skip it. That said, it's VERY useful, though I would love to see them print a modern version of this book with information about internet activity and the like.