The gadgets people just don’t want

THE Atkins Diet bans bread, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to find the two most useless household appliances have been revealed as sandwich toasters and weighing scales.

Sandwich toasters are top of the list of things people wish they hadn’t bought, with an estimated 21.5 million consumers spending about €467m on the appliances, according to a survey by internet insurer esure.com.

Britons have collectively spent more than €14bn on household gadgets they rarely if ever use, the research shows.

Bathroom scales came second - nearly a third of households have hardly ever used them - followed by coffee machines, which appealed to 30% of people at the time but which have rarely come out of their box. Around 22% of people admit they wasted money on a foot spa, while 21% have an electrical knife languishing in a drawer.

One in five people said they had spent more than €740 on useless gadgets, with men more likely to spend money on them than women.

A quarter of people also admitted they had bought gadgets as presents for people even though they knew they would never get used, with the insurer predicting that juicers and ice cream makers will be the latest unwanted electrical gifts.

But despite never using many of the items they bought or were given, just under half of people admitted they had left them cluttering up cupboards or drawers, and 22% said they had put them in the loft or garage.