Howto have a long itemize or enumerate split over many pages

I think it is time I start blogging about all the LaTex stuff I discover all the time. This one was a little tricky. I had a 3 page long enumeration that was bound to a table. So in latex:

\begin{longtable}{|p{\textwidth}|} \hline
\begin{enumerate}
\item ....
\repeat 500 times
...

But of course the enumeration could not be split so it just went off the bottom. What to do? After some thinking I came up with this bodge. If you know a nicer way of doing this please tell me. 

I defined a new command \breaktable

\newcommand{\breaktable}{%
 \setcounter{enumi_saved}{\value{enumi}}
 \end{enumerate}\\
 \begin{enumerate}
 \setcounter{enumi}{\value{enumi_saved}}
}

which I now enter every time I see a sort of logic end to the enumeration. This saves the current counter stops the enumeration adds a new cell and starts the enumeration with the correct value again. You have to define

\newcounter{enumi_saved}

somewhere. Works quite nicely.