Cordless blinds redux Featured

BillGill wrote on 10/20/2024 9:44 AM:

You should just change the blinds. Cordless blinds drove me nuts. I think the idiot who created cordless blinds should rot in hell.

Not sure what kinds of problems you had with your blinds but we like ours just fine and would never go back to the old cord type. If we change the blinds, we'd probably go with smart blinds that can open by themselves in the morning, close by themselves in the evening, and temporarily close during the day when they sense direct sunlight.

I don't know what cordless blinds are, and a quick google hunt didn't teach me anything. I have a feeling they are just a way for the manufacturer to save money and sell more cheaply by not including parts that used to be included. Did I get that right?

The same seems to be true for curtains. Travese rods, with a double cord one pulls, one cord to open or the other cord to close draperies, seem to be a much smaller share of the market. Now people have to tug on the fabric itself or use a stick that is mounted at the moveable or innermost end of the curtains. I've used a stick like that an it works but not nearly as well as a drawstring.

Traverse rods pretty much depend on your drapes having pleats at the top. Pleated drapes are no longer in fashion.

I have a couple. They do not have draw strings and you pull the bottom to lower them or lift to raise. I do not like raising or lowering as could break but strings could be a PITA and lower unevenly.

Nothing's like it used to be.

Don't like it. Nosiree, don't like it at all.

Jim Joyce wrote on 10/20/2024 3:39 PM:

You should buy LCD embedded film which will change from clear to grey to black depending on the applied voltage.

micky wrote on 10/20/2024 5:21 PM:

Just like the OP described, you need to use both hands to pull the thick bottom rod to lower the blinds, and use both hands to raise the thick bottom rod to raise the blinds. Your body height limits how high the blinds can go. A child is too short to raise or lower the blinds. If the blinds are covering high windows, you need a ladder to climb up to the window to raise or lower the blinds. Whoever came up with this idea of cordless blinds should rot in hell.

Cordless blinds were developed to address the problem of small children getting tangled up in the cord and getting strangled to death

Haven't read the link but that makes sense. So anyone who has no small children who inconveniences himself by buying these things (because he thinks they're in fashion?) is foolish. That is, if they still sell the tradional kind. Do they?

Maybe not. From the link: "The new safety standard will require the vast majority of all window covering products sold in the U.S. to be cordless or to have inaccessible or short helper cords. The revised updated safety standard, ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022, strengthens window-covering safety by eliminating the use of free hanging operating cords, free hanging tilt cords and multiple cords into a cord connector on all made-to-order custom window covering products.

The revised standard covers both stock and custom products and will require more window covering products produced in the U.S. to be cordless or have inaccessible cords once the new safety standard is in place."

So I'd buy those with shorter helper cords and attach extensions.

If I had small chldren, I'd take off the shade pull strings and adjust them without the strings until the kids were big enough to know what not to do.

I think I had pull-down window shades when I lived in Brookyn 40 years ago, but I never adjusted them. I think they were all the way open.

Currently the large north facing window in my home office has no shades or curtains, all year round.

And the even larger south-facing window in my bedroom has black-out curtains that are mostly closeed all the time. The cord on the traverse rod broke after about 37 years and I have to replace it. For the last 2 years I've been pulling the curtains open or closed by the corner.

IIRC, I found the traverse rod in new condition on the street in NY. I didn't use it in Brooklyn but here, I set it up using the full length of the included cord. I did have to buy the brackets that hold it to the wall. I have it set up so that the cord goes down the right side of the curtains, then all the way across the bottom to a pully at the left end of the curtains, so in the morning while still lying down, I could reach up my hand and pull the drapes open a little. And so forth.

Yet another example of do-gooder Democrats and RINOs deciding what is best for We the People. I feel so much safer now.

Should let nature take its course. Darwin's natural selection will weed out the generation of children who have the idiotic genes to hang themselves with the blinds cord. Amen.

It sounds like you are praying to God to allow some children to die. That's pretty disgusting. You could have made your point without dragging God or prayer into it.

And you'd think a lot differently if you or someone you knew didn't anticipate the danger and his child died. Try to think from someone else's pov.

And it's ridiculous to think that toddlers can foresee dangers or not baaed on what genes they have.

Kind of like how righties were selected to die from covid. Darwinism at it's best.

Got a by-party death list somewhere to prove that, asshole?

Does it help for you to think of it as a postpartum abortion?