Replacing a broken set of blinds in my house and apparently no one sells the old standard kind where you pull the cord to raise them, I guess because kids and/or pets could tangle in the cord? Bit of an education in miniblinds today.
I didn’t even realize they were called "mini"blinds until I moved in to my current place and there was some kind of rule that mentioned them. I’d only heard them referred to as “blinds” my entire life up to that point. This implies the existence of larger blinds
which I’ve yet to see.Edit: I’ve definitely seen them. Apparently my brain is underclocked today.
Do the vertical giant blinds count as regular blinds or are those the large version? Link
Owning a set of these for my glass sliding door is probably why I’m in the habit of calling the ones in windows “miniblinds.”
I hate those so much. Bougie and useless in my experience
Bougie? I associate them with cheap shitty apartments.
Clackety clackety swishety clack. Every time there is a breeze.
Are they really that bougie? Cuz you can get some cheap ass ones.
they can’t be that bougie, every apartment I’ve ever been in with a sliding door has those, and usually somewhere from 1 to 5 of the slats have broken off from normal operation
You’ll never convince me that they’re not chosen for that reason. When the apartment falls to bits because of cheap components, they can retain the deposit.
I’d say those count. Edited my other comment
About 9 children die every year , strangled by mini blinds. 3500 children are killed by guns every year.
Why did we only fix the most unlikely one?
Probably because there isn’t a giant mini blind lobby, and people plastering stickers all over their pickup trucks yelling about their mini blind rights.
Because we need to repeal the 2nd amendment
gun violence isn’t an engineering problem. miniblind cords are.
If miniblinds had been around in the 1700s they would’ve been enshrined in the constitution also
Well to be fair, they are annoying as hell to operate.
Oh, I see you havent used the style that replaced them yet. Infinitely worse.
The idea in concept is you just lift up or pull down from the bottom of the blinds and they’ll stay in place. In practice however, you pull down and they refuse to budge, risking you breaking them. And then when you lift up, they go to a certain point and then just stop retracting and will fall down halfway from where you wanted them.
I hate them. I hate them so much. Although, I will say blinds in general are just awful. Curtains are the superior window shade.
I thought it was a myth that kids got tangled up in the cord until my kid did it. Thank God I was standing near by.
That is the only kind I know of. How does the other kind work?
Edit: should have been more specific; the string ones are the ones I know of.
The ones I put up in my house have a high tension spring inside the top. When you want to raise the blinds you lift them up when you want to lower the blinds you pull them down. They’re not fantastic but they work well enough. You have to kind of coax them to go up lift them up a few times but then again mine were the cheapest Walmart had available
I’ve got the Ikea version of these and they work great, no coaxing at all. Way easier than that stupid pull cord, I would never go back. Put them up all over the house. One of them went slightly crooked and I never did figure out why or how to fix it though. I think I will eventually get some higher quality replacements anyway.
This is the only kind I know:
I think those are the ones being referred to. Nowadays they makes ones that look almost identical but don’t have the pullstrings. You can just raise and lower them from the bar on the bottom.
Which suck if you have windows higher than your head. Pullstring can be ten feet long and work just fine.
By some mechanism I don’t quite understand, you just grab the lower bar and either lift up or pull down.
Mine have a hard “handle” with a string attached to it on a pulley. Twist the handle to adjust the angle, pull the string down on one side to open them, pull the string down on the other side to close.
We use honeycomb blinds here. You can get them in partially transparent or blackout. They are spring-loaded, and you really can’t use them wrong, pull them up or down as fast or as crooked as you want.
You lift them from the bottom and there is a system of gears and springs (citation needed) that assist with them being raised and hold them in place.
Pull them down from the bottom and they come down (with some resistance).
Huh. The string ones can be mounted inside the window. I guess these can’t then.
Ah yes, miniblinds are the real threat… not school shootings
If we can only solve one problem at a time, then climate change is the only problem that matters.
If we skip that one the rest solve themselves
Ah yes, let’s get the consumer product safety commission on the problem of school shootings. Hell, since they are so able to ban the way blinds chords are setup, why aren’t they ending climate change? The genocide of palastinians? I for one demand the consumer product safety commission do it’s fucking job and reform the American policing system.
When my cat was a baby she got tangled by the neck in a blinds cord, thankfully I was right there, but it scared the shit out of me. I rent, and still (and everywhere else I’ve lived) have corded blinds, but the cords are now rolled up and tied to the top so they’re out of the way. This kind of regulation is a good thing.
Many cats die every year from them actually, just like children. I am super vigilant about hiding mine out of the way so ours can’t see them to play with because I’m terrified of it happening. I really just need to replace them, but they’re the nice heavy wooden white ones and throwing them out seems like such a waste.
i guess that explains why i haven’t see them in years
I remember my dad bought some for his house and they didn’t have the pullstrings. I remember thinking that was so neat because the pullstring ones were always a pain in the ass to raise/lower.
This seemed like such an arbitrary law that I went looking for it and apparently it’s a small committee (4 persons*) rule that was poorly substantiated. The rule itself has been shot down by an appeals court in 2023, but the industry obviously had already set plans in motion to change their product line ups.
“On September 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the CPSC’s rule on custom window coverings. The court agreed with WCMA that CPSC failed to provide an opportunity to comment on the underlying incident data, conducted a flawed cost-benefit analysis that ignored the enormous harm that the rule would have caused the multibillion-dollar custom window coverings industry, and selected an arbitrary effective date for the rule. The CPSC acknowledges that the industry will need at least 2 years to develop completely new products. So the six-month effective date would make it impossible for the window covering industry to create proven safe replacement products.”
https://suncoastblinds.com/understanding-the-cpsc-rule-on-window-coverings-and-the-appeal/
- I’m not from the USA, so to me it seems very weird that this is how decisions with far reaching consequences are taken. In the eu legislation like this gets putten through the wringer in the eu Commission, probably also voted on by the eu Parliament, and then still given years preparation time and back and forth between industry/lobby groups/government. But instead this was: 4 non elected people take a vote and those 4 see no issue with a 6 month deadline. Wth, what a rugpull this would have been for the industry.
Edit to add: that rule that lost in appeal in 2023, was from November 2022, so maybe it does go in effect in november 2024, since it seems like that timetable was the biggest issue for the industry. Just speculating though, can’t look it up atm.
I don’t have kids so can I have other stuff that might be bad for them around my house?
Well that’s depressing.
Actually I don’t think it is, because they’re fixing it. “Hey here’s a problem, let’s use engineering to eliminate the problem.” Best thing we do as a species.
Don’t make the two strings into a loop. Problem solved. Or secure the loop to the wall. Problem solved. But really what I meant is that it’s depressing that people have managed to strangle themselves in a contraption that’s pretty benign by design.
I agree. It’s really sad when children and pets die accidentally or for any reason really.
What’s truly depressing is all the jaded assholes who think that their adult intelligence is the standard for every baby and animal in the world so it’s somehow the kids fault for strangling themselves because they should have known better
Point taken. I can be a jaded asshole sometimes. I’m usually fairly emphatic, but being jaded seeps through every now and then.
They tend to tie themselves into a loop, even when left open.
The risk is not to people in general, but specifically young children and pets that wouldn’t be expected to know how to get themselves out.
I guess that’s understandable. The ones we have use a metal chain that’s in a loop, but secured to the wall. You just pull one side or the other to raise or lower the blinds. It works okay. We do have one of those old-school ones in the kitchen though, and I like how rapidly I can raise the blinds.
in this magical world you live in, do corded ear buds stay untangled as well?
Maybe miniblinds specifically? I bought nice Bali brand blinds from Home Depot a few months ago, and those hdad pull cords.
They’re a lot thicker than mini blinds though. Not sure why it matters for the cord. A kid could strangle on the Bali cord easier than with a cheaper set.
