What mundane/household tasks become much easier/more pleasant as a Wizard1?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

Let's assume you're born a Commoner who learns Wizardry and you are now a Generalist Wizard1! Hurray! Alleluia!

Let's also assume you're still a household servant and you want to use your level 0 and level 1 Wizard spells for household tasks. You could learn magic missile or somesuch for offense, but you won't be using such warring abilities often.

Level 0
Arcane Mark: Imagine this conversation between two bickering children:

A: "That's my cake!"

B: "Nuh uh! I don't see your name on it!"

A: "Cast read magic, doofus!"

B: <surprised reaction>

A: "Toldja so!"

Dancing Lights: It's mostly useful for entertaining or storytelling purposes, but can be useful as a controlled mobile light. This spell lasts 1 minute while the normal light spell lasts 10 minutes per caster level.

Detect Poison: Are you a royal taste tester? Are you otherwise concerned about poisoned materials? If so, this is for you!

Detect Magic: This might be useful in telling you which items are magical heirlooms or where magical traps are, like glyphs of warding.

Light: Need a light? Now you have one for 10 minutes per caster level.

Ghost Sound: This is again useful for entertainment purposes, but imagine also using it to find lost animals or people. "Here, boy! Come to daddy!"

Mage Hand: Get that thing from Close range without needing to move and without needing to physically touch it. For example retrieve papers from a fire or a ring from a toilet or a handkerchief from an open creature's mouth. Situationally useful.

Mending: It's a general-purpose welder, sewer, and minor fixer spell, all-in-one! Get yours today for the low, low price of one cantrip!

Message: All those in Close range can hear what each person says (the caster plus 1 other person per caster level), but sometimes this is useful. It seems much more reliable than, "Tell Martha to tell Jacob to come here!"

Open/Close: It's niche, even compared to mage hand, but sometimes you want to remotely shut a door or window at Close range (no pun intended), like to slam a door in someone's face or on someone's hand. Maybe you're a valet and want to remotely open your client's saddlebags, or you want to remotely open a guest door to make the place seem more impressive.

Prestidigitation: The king of cantrips for our purposes. Want something cleaned? Slightly heated? Chilled? Done, done, and done! Want to make some 'consumable' toys for kids? Sure! Want to get some small item that fell in a hard-to-reach spot that you can see? Mage hand can do it better, but prestidigitation will also work.

Level 1
Alarm: Lets you know when bandits, animals, or misbehaving children are somewhere. Also applies to other creature types.

Animate Rope: Amuse people with your rope tricks. Bind invaders and naughty animals/children! Do things involving 50 and gray!

Burning Hands: "Build a man a fire and he can be warm for a little while. Set a man on fire and he can be warm the rest of his life!" More aptly, this is for starting fires and briefly illuminating areas, assuming fire in this case also means light.

Charm Person: It makes others like you more for 1 hour per caster level. By RAW, its lingering effects are questionable. Regardless, this works on masters, servants, and guests.

Color Spray: As GM, I'd allow this to dye clothes. It still works as a short-range intruder deterrent and a short-term 'time out,' like telling that mean animal to 'sit' and 'stay' while you close the gate behind it to help ensure other creatures stay in their pen.

Comprehend Languages: Now you never need to ask someone what they mean by, "Yo quero Taco Bell!" The same applies to all written and spoken languages. This is useful for reading and translating texts, speeches, and other oration.

Detect Secret Doors: "I knew that secret vault was around here somewhere!" "But I thought it was in the -other- secret escape area!" "Well, at least we know this stuff is here. I wouldn't need this spell so much if I were born an Elf!"

Detect Undead: "I told you our boss was a Vampire!" This spell is pretty niche.

Disguise Self: Parlor tricks (including respectful impersonation), espionage, and sabotage.

Endure Elements: Now, you can more comfortably be singing, "Walkin' in a winter wonderland!" Or you can just make summer feel better, wherever you are.

Enlarge Person: You can reach the top shelf and seem more imposing!

Erase: Imagine this conversation between two bickering children:

A: "That's my cake!"

B: "Nuh uh! I don't see your name on it!"

A: "Cast read magic, doofus!"

B: "Toldja there was nothing!"

A: <surprised reaction>

Really, though, this spell is niche. Maybe it's useful for selectively removing information from sensitive sources, like government documents, or pranking people by erasing key characters and words from phrases.

Expeditious Retreat: With +30' enhancement move speed for 1 minute per caster level, your movement speed probably doubles or more than doubles!

Feather Fall: This works better if you're working in tall areas, like wells, and want things to land safely. This also makes things falling from cabinets, shelves, etc. easier to catch and less noisy when they hit the floor due to moving at a slower speed.

Grease: Make something unstuck. Make something taste buttery. Make attackers drop their handheld items. Provide a slip & slide.

Hold Portal: This keeps secure areas more secure. It can delay attackers, at least for a little while.

Hypnotism: Parlor tricks and stalling creatures.

Identify: Expensive at 100G of components per cast, but useful for trusted servants to tell their masters what stuff is and does.

Jump: Magical fun time! More likely, however, is you'd use another spell instead. Now, if you could get this spell as an always-on item, you might find great use for it like Belkar did.

Mage Armor: Amongst other things, protection from cats,

Magic Weapon: "Squire, hand me my enchanted weapon!" That's pretty much the entirety of this spell, unless you cast it on something you wield.

Mount: Get someone or something there faster than walking. Can help with manual labor, like plowing, pushing, or pulling.

Obscuring Mist: Block attackers, block sight for private things, and provide a cool, refreshing mist to those in the area.

Protection from Alignment: Also includes immunity to mind control.

Reduce Person: Now you can access those hard-to-reach places, especially as an adult, and hide better!

Silent Image: Deter invaders and entertain self and those around you. Requires Concentration (normally a standard action) each round, but with no duration limit. (You'll probably fall asleep or otherwise stop concentrating on this long before that.)

Sleep: Induce bedtime for insomniacs, intruders, and children alike!

Tenser's Floating Disk (Disc?): Carries objects, others, and possibly also you (and as GM I would allow it to carry you) for 1 hour per caster level.

True Strike: When you absolutely, positively need to hit someone in the balls, accept no substitutes!

Unseen Servant: Outsource some of your work (cleaning, opening doors, etc.) for 1 hour per caster level. Be careful of its repetitious nature: It needs supervising like a robot,

Ventriloquism: For 1 minute per caster level at Close range, cause sounds to emanate from elsewhere. This is also useful for entertainment and finding lost creatures.

[Khedrac]

Mage Hand: Get that thing from Close range without needing to move. Situationally useful.

THis is also how to retrieve something dropped into the privy or the fire (in the first case trasnfer directly to somewhere to wash it, in the second case put it somewhere to cool down). It is far more important than "without needing to move" - it is "without having to interact with the surroundings yourself".
[off-topic example] - the most runs in a game of cricket from a sidgle ball came form a match where the ball came to rest between the paws of a lion that had wandered on to the pitch - the umpires refused to rule it "lost ball" as they could see it and the batters kept running. Even if use of magic earned 4 penalty runs this spell would have saved loads.[/off-topic example]

Color Spray: As GM, I'd allow this to dye clothes. It still works as a short-range intruder deterrent.

Non-lethal handling of belligerent animals or people. Need to calm down the bull that has just broken into the garden? Cast color spray then toss a halter round its neck while stunned.

[Jack_Simth]

Note that this is better in Pathfinder, as Cantrips are at-will, and there's more to choose from.

[Eldariel]

Dancing Lights and Ghost Sounds (and obviously, Silent Image) also serve communicative purposes to deliver messages to another floor without physically going there. Just produce some agreed upon signal and you are good. Their ability to reach the intended target obviously varies based on medium though, but they are all usable in various tasks. Also for signalling stuff like "dinner is ready" as well as for startling cattle (if they are breaking out for instance).

[Psyren]

Note that this is better in Pathfinder, as Cantrips are at-will, and there's more to choose from.

Port in the 3.5 ones, and the expanded Prestidigitation uses from Tome & Blood too. 3.P ftw!