What are your favorite mods to use?

Global Mods:
I have a lot right now, I guess. I have a smarter lights mod that turns the lights off and on when Sims enter and leave the rooms in homes.

One to make more walkbys and cars drive by my Sims' houses. (doesn't cover community lots). It's fun to see cars passing by my Sims houses with a real Sim in them. lol (cars, trucks, cabs, police, busses, custom travel busses too, all of them in game and or any custom cars in game so it would seem).

One to stop witches from appearing on my owned business lots. It got very annoying years ago. I just use a cheat to turn my Sims into witches these days, so I can get down to hexing Sims. They can still travel to the hidden witch lots.

An old one to stop the effects on stereos from animating but it no longer works.

I can't remember if I have the startup cheat in folder so I don't have to type the whole boolprop for every boolprop cheat.

Mods I pull out and put back in:

Dirt road and different type neighborhood cars and or wagons or classic cars, or cobble stone streets etc. that affect all hoods.

A mod to keep witches looking like they are in the normal state.

Semi Global:

Many different paintings and objects so I don't have to enter cheats but can just click on the object to change something. Or dance animations and or things for machinima clips such as running through reactions and or emotions etc.

TwoJeffs' object mod to correct any relationships if they have become disassociated by me doing something silly like controlling a visiting Sim which can result in a disconnection of family ties. It does a lot of other stuff, too.

I used to have a mod object to change aspiratons and LTWs but can't remember what happened to it.

And a mod that allows me to control any Sim on any lot, even visiting my own Sims so I don't miss visiting neighbors so much. lol I switch to that Sim while on a home lot and it's like visiting my own Sims. lol

A mod to live above a store in an apartment building. It was great, but I pull that one in and out depending on what hood I'm playing or if I remove a custom hood where I do that.

A mod that allows the Uni worker to serve food to Sims living in apartments. ( common area of the building)

A mod that allows my Sim (long before AL) to be the landlord of any house in the hood. Set the rent then collect and get paid from my other Sims.

Invisible driveways and extensions. Those are great.

Things I don't have in game right now but have used:

Toddler being able to climb stairs.

Rideable horses mod.

Rideable trikes, and other things.

Clown NPCs at carnavals in my game. They entertained my Sims while at a fair or carnaval. (npc place holder they stand on)

Rideable carnaval rides such as rollercoasters, water falls they rode through, etc.

Custom chickens and sounds. Sims go watch them. (for fun)

All sorts of custom Star Trek weapons that some could kill off Kirk or Picard. lol

And a lot of different custom careers but have to remember not to delete those before having the Sim quit the job so I don't use much of those anymore.

One of my favorites I still use the sit anywhere with drink (instead of standing) they will look (probably) for the most comfortable chair in the room so it seems they are normal and sit with drinks in the living room or a parlor etc. It's great as some Sims are having a drink while seated and having a conversation just like on the soaps. lol But with the drink machine drinks they will choose the floor on community lots.

I used to have a lot of custom buffet foods and different desserts such as icecream in the fridge. Used to have a lot of custom foods to serve, but some custom plates actually messed up my game a long time ago, (when game was current) so I never did use custom plates anymore. But the foods may not be the problem but custom plate.

ETA: I think I may be addicted to cc because I had 13GBs at one time, many things extracted from many different games, more of a darker, grungy look to them such as Silent Hill etc. those also may have an assoiciated action but mostly decor and or building materials etc.

Neighborhood deco is one of my favourite things to find as there's not a huge amount out there compared to other CC but people have done a lot of TS3 to TS2 conversions of rabbit hole buildings. I can also recommend anything by Criquette who's content you can find on MTS and newer things on Tumblr. CuriousB for skyboxes and hood deco. Pleasant Sims has a nice guide for upgrading the look of your hood here: https://youtu.be/q6R9cfTsFgE

If we're talking gameplay mods and not so much objects/clothes/etc. then I have quite a few things that fix annoyances or that just tweak gameplay more to my liking. This isn't everything but they are the ones that stick out most to me. Note these are the places that I originally found them, it's been a few years since I downloaded them so they may be hosted elsewhere now:

Squinge (from InSIMenator) -

• Feed baby (breastfeeding mod)
  
• TownieNoMemoryloss
  

Simlogical - Various and depends on what you are looking for but well worth a look as there's a lot of useful things there.

Jfade (DJS Sims)

• Less annoying myshuno
  
• no zone sound
  

MATY

• SaraMk has a mod (allowedinlots) that allows hood deco to be placed in lots
  
• Syberspunk - Quiet Pregnancy (you don't hear the chime after successful Try for Baby.)
  
• Goggalor - All shiftables
  
• Pescado - Various. I don't use a huge amount compared to what is available but lots of fixes for annoyances are available there. Basically if something annoys you about the game he's probably made a fix for it.
  

ModtheSims

• MogHughson - Desk locator (lets you assign a desk so your child always places their homework there), Greeting Cards System, Apartments and Shopping - allows a community shop to work on the same lot that has apartments
  
• HugeLunatic - RugFixes - If you've ever tried to move a rug with the snap to grid cheat set to off you'll know that it messes up the graphics on the rug, this mod fixes it.
  
• Arel_91 - Select Your Cemetery
  
• Monique - Do Homework - Tells your sim child to start working on their homework at 7pm.
  
• Numenor - Smarter Lights
  
• Quickshot14 - School Spring/Summer Break
  
• Rebecah - Puppies and Kittens can use stairs
  

Simbology - Various fixes and annoyance fixes including

• No Friends for Career
  
• Self Exploding Bottles
  
• Simblender
  
• Smart Beds
  
• Always flush and Wash hands
  
• Visitor Controller
  
• ACR (Automatic Casual Romance)
  

Sims2Workshop

• No Xmas Tree Fire
  
• Safe Reindeer Hack
  

If you want things for your business Retail Sims has a lot of good sets for different types of shops. I've heard the site is closing down soon though so best to get there sooner rather than later. There's also a nice bakery set on MTS (Antique Bakery I think it's called).
Buggybooz on blogspot has a couple of lovely kitchen sets which I use a lot.
OMSPs (One more slot packages) - I use sets made by SilentLucidity, JohnBrehaut1 and AriffRazalin.
Fakepeeps has some adorable default replacements so your babies wear an outfit instead of just a nappy. You can only use one at a time but it looks so much cosier than just leaving them in a nappy.
Hysterical Paroxysm - Default Replacements for the bedding.
Phaenoh - Clean Social Bunny
Awasegg - Ultimate Pet Eyes (I use ice set 2)
Last thing I'll mention is that I'm currently trying out the Honeygold Redux skintone set by Dreadpirate. Not sure if I'm going to stick with it but I like it a lot more than some of the defaults out there as it's more Maxis Match like, it's almost too pretty though.

No friends for career is a good one. Building up friendships can be difficult enough sometimes, but even harder is trying to maintain them all!
I also like the baby outfits!

My musthaves:
Faster universities
The 'ask to be just friends' interaction, deletes the romance relationship without any consequences/(bad) memory
Children can chat on computer
Last name dialog when you get married
Hacked coat to buy clothing (for free)
Job noticeboard
Bring friend home from work/school dialog
Invisible driveway

I use to have default skins/eyes etc but I kinda like the oldschool look from the Sims 2.

I'm not in my Windows partition at the moment to actually look, but I can think of some. No friends needed for promotion, no jealousy at all, no townie regen, no stray respawn, no dormie regen, there can only be one professor, missing genie lamp wish fix, no friendship gain with service NPCs, vampire's don't bite NPC's or townies, no unlink on delete (keeps Sim info from being corrupted if a tombstone disappears or you accidentally delete it), college clock (allows you to easily customize the time your Sim is in Univeristy for each Sim individually), simlogical teleporter (teleports Sims to your house). And the batbox (ffs lot debugger) which has lots of options dealing with memories, LTW's, want/fear slots, and a few other things.

I know I have more, those are just the ones I thought of. I'm very picky about what I add to my game and I still ended up with hundreds of mod and CC files.

I’m not at my computer, but I can remember some of them. Tons of custom careers, traits, and aspirations, of course. I use Simvasion’s Eco Lifestyle mod and a couple of Tmex’s mods. I use the residential venues mod, but it doesn’t work very well in my game. I use the mod for Sims to eat at a table, and the one to not wash dishes where they angry poop. Oh yes! I’ve been wanting to share information on a new one: Triplis’s Thinking skill mod! It’s fantastic and thorough! I also use a religion mod — I think it’s called Rambunctious Religions. It’s another thorough mod. I use a few I made for myself, including my jazz singer and pastor careers. I just remembered another one, a mod to keep cowplants alive longer.

Ah yes, self exploding bottles. That's a necessity. When your Sims have a baby, they leave bottles all over the kitchen otherwise. I have a similar one for college homework, because dormies always leave it all over tables and never come back to them.