Honorable mentions for other secondary gadgets:

- Cree LR6 LED ceiling lights: My wife hates the color cast of CFLs and I hate the buzz of their cheap electronics. I had bought a bunch of halogen lights, which look great but burn out too fast and put out way too much heat. The solution? LED lights. One Cree light is roughly $70 (plug: good prices and prompt shipping from needabulb.com, who is now regularly spamming me with coupon codes and such; bug me if you want one), putting out the equivalent light of a 60W halogen bulb while only consuming 10.5W (comparable CFLs consume 20+ W). They're supposed to last 20 years, and judging by the massive aluminum heat sinks, they took this goal seriously. I've deployed these things all over the house. My next mission is going to be replacing all the halogen bulbs in our landscape lighting, which collectively consume ~1kW.

- Honeywell's solar timer programmable light switch. I have two of these now, one driving the front porch lights and the other driving some indoor lights. You tell it your lat/long and it figures out when sundown must be. You can then set programs like "turn on at sundown and turn off at 10pm." They even auto-correct for daylight savings. Unlike some cheaper timer switches, these ones have the additional benefit of an internal rechargeable battery, so you can truly install them and forget about them.

- My wife was sick of seeing all the assorted electronics around our TV set (amp, TiVo, etc.). They're all now hidden in a cabinet, but what makes it all work are two gadgets: an IR remote repeater and a temperature-controlled fan kit, which turns on by itself when the cabinet gets above 85F. Both easy to set up and they just work.