Ever arrive at your holiday vacation destination only to discover you've forgotten to pack your swim trunks, medicines or cocktail olives? Nothing annoys me more than to have to spend the first hour of my trip buying a duplicate item to one I already own back home. The web site Don't Forget Your Toothbrush offers tools to help you pack what you need, when you need it. Kind of like a mother, except it won't sew your name into your underwear.

The free service begins by asking some basic questions; where you are bound, where, and the purpose for your trip; recreation, business, beach, winter sports, for example. It then generates a checklist of tasks you'll need to carry out in preparation for the trip. For example, if I were spending my holidays in Majorca, I might need to

• Check passport
• Buy travel insurance
• Arrange for inoculations
• Book airport travel service
• Book car rental
• Arrange a house sitter
• Book a kennel

The full list is comprehensive, and broken down by how far in advance each task should be accomplished.

DFYT also generates a packing list from which I can choose those items essential to my happiness and well-being. The list runs to hundreds of items, including many that I disdain to carry, and for which I am forced to eat humble pie when I ask my wife for. Her purse is a bottomless vault of incidentals that saves our trips at least once a day.

Sadly, I won't be visiting Majorca, or anywhere warm, this winter. Instead, I'm staying toasty by reminding myself that my dollars went for the bonuses of Wall Street execs, who are suffering out the holidays in noble silence on the beaches of the Caribbean.