[StuartDH]

how many electrical appliances have you got in your house? Apparently, most homes have approximately 35, electrical appliances, which is double the amount that they would have had 30 years ago.

if I include the individual components of my computer (one PC, 2 TFT monitors, one wireless modem, one set of speakers, one printer, one fax, one external hard drive) that's eight items already

[paul m]

Yes, probably too many but only a problem when they're in use!
There's a lot of criticism of gadgets and this is true in some cases - powered machinery for something that can easily be done manually - sheer laziness.
However some gadgets - particularly in the kitchen - can save energy. We make our own bread with a bread machine which, of course, uses quite a lot of energy but it's a lot less than I used to use making bread manually: for a start, in the winter, we used to have to warm the kitchen up just to get the dough to rise; then turn on the oven for fifteen minutes to achieve the cooking temperature! Much less energy involved in a discrete, insulated breadmaker.
So we shouldn't knock all gadgets - some are energy saving ....