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
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.
Bougie? I associate them with cheap shitty apartments.
Clackety clackety swishety clack. Every time there is a breeze.
I’d say those count. Edited my other comment
I’d always heard them called “Venetian blinds”, compared to roller blinds.
I used to think it was “only” toddlers. Tragic stories of 12 year olds dying from the pull cords. Fucking horrible.
12 year olds
How in tf‽
11 was when I learned to masturbate. 12 was when I first heard the term “autoerotic asphyxiation”. I very well could have been a statistic…
I haven’t thought about a strangle-wank for ages.
The ol’ choke and stroke
Don’t get Carradined away.
Climb on couch to get at cord. Fall. Cord wraps around neck.
Edit: Remember 12 year oldscan stillbe ~60 lbs and curtains tend to be screwed into the fame.
A little pull and tug with a bit of airway constriction?
Ooh, an interrobang
Am I misunderstanding what pull cords are, or why not have it so the two strings can separate easily? The two strings in my blinds “snap” together so that it’s easy to raise/lower the blinds, but the strings separate very easily from each other if applying force in any other kind of way (would be impossible for a child to accidently hang themselves with it for example)
It’s not just going between the cords. There’s also a problem that under the wrong circumstances, the cord can whip around the neck and become tangled on the tassel, around the neck.
I’m going to need to see a reenactment or video before I believe this.
The strings come off the “screwed in” part?
I don’t think politicians came up with the new design, but embraced the new design. This has been an issue for decades and the ban is newin USA.
I know a family whose baby hung themselves on the cord. Must be common enough that they just banned them.
So make it two chords instead of a loop. Problem solved.
Take two pieces of string with wooden knobs at the ends and hang them up together.
Put your arm between them and pull down quickly.
Repeat, and notice how a fraction of the time those wooden knobs may wrap around each other and become tied by a knot held by the downward force of your arm until you pull up which you can’t do if you’re hanging.
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.
You got cheap ones. And like bottom of the barrel cheap. I have ones from Home Depot and that has never happened. What has happened is that the internal strings have a lot more friction on them and they have snapped, rendering the entire thing broken. But of course I got the cheapest ones from Home Depot too.
I haven’t experienced them those but the pull down shades I’ve used in the past have thing where you can twist the rod to set the tension and make them work better. Does it have something like that you can do? Also I agree with you about just using curtains
I’ve never understood why they had more than 1 string for a set of blinds, it’s not like anybody wants to raise only one corner of it?
My experience has been that stringless blinds are the Landlord Special of window covering, they suck ass and barely raise up if you don’t get the individual “blades” perfectly horizontal.
One string pulling up the left side, one string pulling up the right side. They are separated in the “down” position, so they have to be separated in the “up” as well.
If you use only one string in the middle, they will never stay level.
Little trick I figured out as a kid in case you ever have the string blinds again (also, never seen stringless):
Cut a string to the same length as the two coming out of the blinds, snip the little plastic cap off the two attached to the blinds, and braid the three strings together, tie at the end. Never pull unevenly again.
You can’t braid them together, they won’t go through the take-up mechanism when you drop them closed. I tried wrapping one with the same idea in mind and had to sit and unwrap them because I couldn’t close them anymore.
You could just braid the bottom and set the braid with a knot, but that’s basically what the knot at the end and the cap do.
Even if you braid it while the blinds are already closed it won’t work?
I haven’t tried this yet but want to try when I get home. I worry about my cats getting tangled and one cord would be better than whatever the hell is going on with it now lol.
I’ve personally done it, but now I wonder if those blinds were somehow loose or different. Don’t wanna suggest you do it just to have to undo it if it doesn’t work :/
I can definitely believe it works for some styles. You basically have to open the blinds and then slowly let it down and see where the strings go. If they’re feeding into separate “tracks” as you lower it, it won’t work.
The string that is fed down and hangs all the blinds together is basically the same string as the pull-string. The one I tried this on, each string split into separate tracks inside the top part, so it didn’t work.
Maybe the ones I’ve had are looser? I’ve personally done it to 3 different blinds, but they were all in the same rental house, so maybe they’re different somehow
You can also just leave the cap intact, and and just tie the end of the cord in a knot to keep the strings together. Just loop it around itself and poke the end through the loop and tighten it to make the knot sit near the end of the cord.
The two strings is so that you can keep them level when one side inevitably wears slightly longer than the other.
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.
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.
Shhhh. Don’t give the conservatives more stuff to scream about.
Because we need to repeal the 2nd amendment
I wouldn’t say repeal, I would say adapt & clarify.
If the original purpose was for a “well regulated militia,” then there should be regulations and training for you to be able to own a gun.
Fail your certification, lose your license.
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
There’s no amendment protecting mini blinds.
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 also use the cheapest Walmart ones and they’re fine - much better than the “try 15 angles till you find the right one” cords. The trick is to raise them slowly and gingerly so that you’re not just bunching up the blinds.
My favorite thing about them is the snap-on installation. No more sketchy slide-in plastic cubes with a plastic cover. Just drill the metal clamp on and snap them in. Surprisingly sturdy.
I actually didn’t know the old style was “illegal.” I just thought they were so unpopular that they replaced them, even at the most basic option.
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.
I love that thing when i saw it, unfortunately i can’t have it because i suspect my cat will destroy it in a week, so i got a cheapo one with beaded cord that loop. I guess i have to tie that up for safety.
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.
They can! They look identical to the old blinds, just without the string. I had to ask if the installers forgot the strings when we got new ones a few years ago!
Wait, I meant like in between the glass of the windows. If you have to pull and push the blinds themselves that would not work… right?
Are you saying that they’d be in between 2 stationary panes of glass? That sounds like a nightmare to deal with anyway.
Stationary for usual operations, at least. There is usually a mechanism to open it up so you can mend them if necessary.
I have some of those. There’s just a sliding mechanism built into the pane on the inside. No string. Much cleaner look and so much easier to use.
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.
They aren’t illegal to sell.
Manufacturers can’t make them any longer, existing inventory is permitted to be sold off. So they can be found on amazon, ebay, and a bunch of other places still. Just won’t see any new stock coming in, and places that have less stock (as in, not gigantic warehouses) haven’t been getting new ones in for some time. Nearly a year now I believe.
The phrase the Lowe’s associate used was “Illegal to have on store shelves.”
I’m not sure you should have a Lowe’s Associate as a legal advisor.
The relevant text:
Corded blinds are dangerous to children and pets. Roughly one child per month dies from blind cord strangulation, and more than 600 children per year are injured. That’s nearly an average of 2 preventable injuries to a child per day. Between 1990 and 2015, more than 16,000 children were injured.
New Voluntary Standards
- The Window Covering Manufacturers Association decided safer standards in January 2018.
- Manufacturers adopted the new standard on cordless blinds in December 2018.
- In 2019, all standard model window blinds were expected to be cordless.
Cordless Blinds & Law
- Corded blinds are not regulated under state or federal legislation.
- New, safer guidelines allow for cords on custom-made coverings.
- Per WCMA standards, custom cords should not be longer than 40% of the window height.
I think you should.
oh, Amazon will gladly sell you illegal goods. and no one will stop them
Selling plastic straws is not permitted in the EU anymore, so I’m buying them on Amazon. Don’t know whether these regulations apply only to physical stores or Amazon doesn’t give a damn, but you can go around such laws quite easily.
Likely they don’t care. Someone bought a bunch of cigarettes from Amazon.
Selling plastic straws is not permitted in the EU anymore
For real? Because plastic straws, and not the bajillion tons of packaging materials are the bane of our existence. Right?
Don’t know how the law is worded, but you won’t find plastic straws in physical shops or restaurants, and all juice boxes come with paper straws. I don’t have any issues buying plastic straws, both regular-size and for boxed juices, from Amazon.
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.
Also, if you have mini blinds made in the 70s, they’re full of lead
It is how you protected yourself from nuclear blasts since it was the cold war and all.
Fuckin-a roit buddy! Built back when people knew how to party!
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.
They just installed some in our new office. Guess it’s time to somehow choke myself on them and get a phat check.
Okay but if you get stuck, at least try to get in one good asphyx-e-wank on your way out.
Is there an app for that?
External Venetian blinds are the best, but I think they aren’t so popular in the US from what I heard?
I’m not sure what that is. Outside of the window?
Yes. It keeps the heat that is generated on the surface of the blinds outside your window, so the room doesn’t heat up so much.
Wouldn’t they get really dirty? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in the US.
Yes, it does become part of cleaning the window to also wipe the slats. They are usually made of Aluminium as far as I know.
I posted a picture in a nearby branch of the comment tree.
In the US nearly every window that opens has a screen in it to keep insects out. That’s why venetian blinds have gone out of favor in the past 70 years.
I may be missing the point. How do the external venetian blinds clash with insect screens?
My father put screens in various windows in his house and still has the external venetian blinds nonetheless.
I may be missing the point. How do the external venetian blinds clash with insect screens?
I’ve never had external blinds, but I’d assume the issue is being able to access them to open or close them. I suppose for a single-story house you could go outside every time?
Ah no, no way!
You have an articulated rod on the inside which goes through a small hole to the blind cage outside, which you turn to move the blinds up and down, and the first bit of movement in either direction affects the tilt of the blinds. The rod can be straightened when you’re not turning it and it has a plastic holder on the frame so it doesn’t dangle around.
I’m not sure if I’m describing it well, here is a picture of the rod:
And a picture of the blinds:
Nowadays more and more people put in a little electric motor with a remote control instead.
