Fix for Crooked Work Boxes
This is the easiest way to bring a receptacle flush with the drywall.
The only way to make sure that a receptacle remains solid for years is to screw it tightly to the face of the electrical work box. But that doesn’t work if the box is crooked or is not flush with the surface of the wall. Some electricians support receptacles by resting the ears on the wall surface, leaving a gap between the receptacle and the box. Sooner or later, though, those outlets will break off the drywall and become loose.
Here’s the easiest way I’ve found to bring a receptacle flush with the drywall. Buy a length of windshield-washer rubber tubing at your local auto-parts store. It works perfectly for this job. Determine how much you want to shim out on each side of the receptacle, and then snip off a piece of tubing about 1/16 in. longer than the space you want to fill.
This tubing has a 5/16-in. outer diameter, and the hole is a little less than 1/8 in. Just slide the rubber pieces onto the screws and secure the receptacle to the box. A bonus is that the tubing fits snugly over the receptacle screws and holds them straight out, making it easier to line up the screws to the holes in the box. I always keep a roll of this tubing in my electrical toolbox.
— Grant Litts; Norway, Mich. Edited by Charles Miller.
From Fine Homebuilding #306
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You can buy shims to fix this problem, but even the cheap ones cost 17¢ apiece and you may need several, so this tip gets my vote. The hose holding the screw in place is definitely a bonus. But we haven't used hoses for windshield wipers since electric ones were invented, 60-70 years ago.
I just noticed Litts said windshield WASHER hose, not the vacuum hose we used in my youth. You can probably get appropriate hose at HD or NAPA, so this hint still gets my vote.