This past summer I was at someone’s house and was amazing when I saw how they were charging their phone. They simply had a USB cord coming out of a USB port on their electric outlet! Genius! How did I not have this?

I had forgotten about it until a recent trip to Home Depot were we walking by this wall:

In mentioning the outlet to Jon he told me it would literally take minutes to do and it was then that I knew I could have my very own USB port/outlet. We ended up going with this USB charger and outlet combo by Leviton.

Here is how you can easily tackle it yourself.

Step 1: Go to breaker box and turn off the power to that outlet.

Step 2: Remove from wall.

Step 3: Make sure to note what color wire goes to what color screw on the outlet you are removing so that you know the proper way to re-attach the wires on the new outlet.

In this photo you can see our old outlet where the green screw goes to the ground cable which has no jacket and the silver screw goes to the white cable. On the opposite side there was a gold screw that went to our black wire.

Step 4: Once your wires are loose and you have noted what goes where you can now attach the wires to the new outlet.

Step 5: Take electrical tape and cover the screws where you just attached wires. It’s not necessary, but since those are live wires and Jon has always added a layer of electrical tape for extra protection.

Step 6: Then simply place back into box and attach cover plate. Note that you may need a new style cover plate so make sure to pick one up when you are purchasing outlet. They are in the same aisle and most are around $1.

It’s a much cleaner look and was a very budget friendly project that took around 5 mins to tackle. Win, win!