When my house was built in 1954, the builder never dreamed that anyone could have 20 things that need to be powered in just the living room! If it weren’t for surge protectors, I’d be like Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story – constantly unplugging something so I could plug in something else. ThinkGeek has an adapter that converts a single wall outlet into two AC outlets and two USB outlets. The Pivot Power Mini Wall Plug works well at home, and it folds up so you can throw it into your gear bag for travel. The Pivot Power Mini is $24.99.
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I’m thinking I should keep one short extension cord with this. With the cord plugged into the wall and the pivot unit plugged into the cord, that should put the pivot unit somewhere more convenient than the wall–say, the top of the nightstand. That would also help with some of those hotel combination lamps that have awkwardly-placed power plugs in the base. Cheers, @Russel
Would be nice if it didn’t over the other outlet when this is open.
Amazon has short cords called outlet savers that would be useful. They are available in lengths of 1 ft, 3ft, 6ft, etc. One of those would work great with this. It would leave the second outlet useable, and you could get one long enough to make the adapter available even if the outlet is behind a piece of furniture.
I picked up one of these no more than a month ago, and I must say that I am not impressed. When I opened the package, it seemed rather cheaply made, but I trusted that something from Quirky that had so many early supporters would have been properly engineered. Two weeks into use (light home use), one of the two sockets no longer works.
For comparison, I have a two-year old RCA unit that functions the same, with two USB sockets that charge the iPad and other iDevices as well as other USB devices, and it is still working well. It only cost $10 when I picked it up at a local electronics Big Box store.