We are officially a nation of hoarders: 23.4m UK adults have banished a useless object to a drawer or cupboard and 10.6m have used their loft or garage to store their dust gatherers. We also have no qualms about cluttering up the houses of friends and family, with 22.3m of UK adults admitting to palming off unwanted items to their nearest and dearest.

Nikki Sellers, Head of Home Insurance at esure.com, said: "Many of us are suckers for advertising and fanatical about keeping up with the latest fads and must-have gadgets. But as a nation we’re guilty of boxing up and stockpiling our white elephant household gadgets in lofts, garages, wardrobes and drawers, leaving them out of sight and easily forgotten.”

“But over the years the number and value of these offending items rises, so it’s important to keep an inventory of all your home contents - even your mistake-buys or unwanted gifts - to avoid being left under-insured.”

Almost a fifth (18%) of adults have spent over £500 on useless gadgets for either themselves or as a gift for someone, with men wasting more money on dust collectors than their shopping-savvy female counterparts (£361.83 and £238.77 respectively). And 18-24s are fuelling the sales of gimmicky gadgets that are lining our drawers. One in four (23%) would buy a counting bottle opener - which let’s you know how many beers you’ve had by keeping a running total - and a fifth would buy eye massager glasses (21%) with stress-busting, vibrating pads or an automatic card shuffler (18%) as gifts.

Regional statistics

Homes in the North East are overflowing with the most useless gadgets in the UK. 81% admitted to possessing at least one offending item that was rarely, if ever, used since it was purchased.

Adults in the North West spend the most on white elephant gadgets for themselves (averaging £210) whilst Yorkshire men and women spend the least (averaging £160).

Scots are the most choosy when it comes to present buying, with just 17% admitting to buying someone a gadget gift that they expected would never actually be used, compared to 31% of East Midlanders - the worst culprits.

Sources

ICM Research interviewed a random selection of 1015 adults aged 18+, by telephone between the 17th and 18th of August 2005.

*£9.4bn is based on a population of 47.8m adults in the UK (source: National Statistics: Population Trends, Summer 2005) and calculated from esure.com’s research using an average of each price bracket. For example, 3% of people estimated they spent between £11 and £20 on white elephant items for themselves or as gifts. That’s 1,434,000 people (3% of the adult UK population) spending on average £15.50 on white elephant goods – totaling £22,227,000. Once each price bracket was calculated in this way, the sum total came to £9,398,267,400.

**Figure based on multiplying the average cost of a sandwich toaster on Argos.co.uk (£14.65) by the number of people admitting to owning but not using the item calculated from the ICM research and National Statistics: Population Trends, Summer 2005.