Wow, I'm getting a headache just looking at that mess. This person went to extremes to avoid wire nuts, and made aggressive use of the notoriously flaky "back stab" connections in the quest to avoid wire-nuts. This adds, I count, 5 unnecessary connections. So buy some red wire nuts and some black and white solid THWN-2 #12. We're getting rid of all that noise.
However, the setup as-it-is has done a good job of matching wire colors to functions, so we're going to make full use of that. Color codes will be:
- Black = Always-hot
- White = Neutral
- Red = Switched-Hot
Pigtail those receps on the bench
Normally we advise "Don't tear everything apart", but this time - yes, do that. Unscrew the red wire from the right recep, but leave that attached to the left recep. All other wires, remove them from the receps. If you're willing to work there on your knees, you can leave ground attached to the right recep (that one's a little complicated to remove).
Now, I want you to attach pigtails as follows:
To the left recep: Put a black pigtail on the same side as the red pigtail, but on the other brass screw. Also, put a white pigtail on a silver screw (either one).
To the USB recep: Put a black pigtail on the brass screw, and a white pigtail on the silver screw.
Now you match color to color.
Now, aside from grounds, you have 2 black 2 white 2 red coming out of the wall, and 2 black 2 white 1 red coming from receptacles. Join all the blacks on a red wire-nut.. Join all the whites on a red wire-nut. Join all the reds on a red or yellow wire-nut.
And you're done.
So easy when it's color coded!
Now it's true, it's possible to make splices on the recep itself. But you also saw how messy that makes things. This, you can understand, right? So will the next person. Onward power only goes through 1 splice instead of 6. And you get to do the pigtailing on the bench!
