The holidays are on the way, and with them come the inevitable battle for wall outlets and power strips, waged by indoor/outdoor lights and other electrical-powered decorations.

Each outlet becomes a little more valuable during the holidays.

Here’s a gadget that can help with the fight: A half-foot long extension cord. I found one at The Home Depot for $5. If you Google “short extension cord” (without the quotes), you’ll find others — some priced below $5. But The Home Depot one has a feature that others may lack.

The cord plugs into a wall outlet or power strip. It takes up an outlet — but it also replaces it: There is a “pass-through” on the back of the cord’s plug that allows something else to be plugged into it.

Meanwhile, there’s another outlet added at the other end of the short extension cord.

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Why would anyone want a short extension cord? For one thing, it’s short, and therefore it costs less than a long cord. Why pay $10 for a 15-foot cord when the short one will do for half that? Plus the longer cord likely won’t have a pass-through plug like the short cord has.

Just moving the item that needs to be plugged in a few inches can solve a lot of problems. Take, for instance, the “wall wort.” Also known as a “power brick,” it’s a small transformer that plugs directly into an outlet.

More times than not, it will hang down enough to cover up the outlet below or above where it is plugged in, or will intrude on the outlet next to it on a power strip, thus making it useless.

The short extension cord solves that problem.

For a small expenditure, it can save a large amount of aggravation.

Lonnie Brown can be reached at [email protected].