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.
Ah yes, miniblinds are the real threat… not school shootings
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.
oh, Amazon will gladly sell you illegal goods. and no one will stop them
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.
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 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.
I’d always heard them called “Venetian blinds”, compared to roller blinds.
Do the vertical giant blinds count as regular blinds or are those the large version? Link
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
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’d say those count. Edited my other comment
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.
The two strings is so that you can keep them level when one side inevitably wears slightly longer than the other.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I used to think it was “only” toddlers. Tragic stories of 12 year olds dying from the pull cords. Fucking horrible.
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.
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.
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…
Don’t get Carradined away.
I haven’t thought about a strangle-wank for ages.
The ol’ choke and stroke
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?
I know a family whose baby hung themselves on the cord. Must be common enough that they just banned them.
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 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.
By some mechanism I don’t quite understand, you just grab the lower bar and either lift up or pull down.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
i guess that explains why i haven’t see them in years
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?
Unrelated to blinds but my friend told me about having hanging Christmas cords. Her
carcat made a wrong jump and she came home to a dead cat. She was 5. I am trauma’d.I know what you were trying to write, but I am still picturing your friend as 5 yr old, speeding her car over a ramp so bad, it caused her cat miles away at home to die in shock.
Unrelated to blinds but my friend told me about having hanging Christmas cords. Her car made a wrong jump and she came home to a dead cat. She was 5. I am trauma’d.
Typo strikes again!
Anything is lethal when you give it to a million people. This is the main reason I take issue with pointing out individual examples of for example autonomous vehicle crashes and treating that as an evidence for why they’re inherently dangerous. Almost nothing is 100% safe. I bet there are dozens of people suffocating to their pillows each year.
Are you saying we should not have safety regulations just because we can’t make everything 100% safe?
Nothing is ever 100% safe. Risk assessment is a big part of federal regulations. (See refs at JSTOR and NCBI) One of the key questions is what is the cost/benefit balance for a product. Kitchen knives are hazardous, but it’s very hard to cook without them, so they balance heavier on the benefit side despite the risks. Radithor is all risk and no benefit, so it was an easy decision to ban it.
The point ContrarianTrail was making is that there is some risk in nearly everything. People have died as a result of garden tools, cars, house pets, shaving, buckets, toothpicks, baseball, etc. Here’s a list. The part he left out is the cost/benefit analysis. I prefer pull cords on my blinds, and I find the new regulations annoying. But I guess some federal agency decided they aren’t so useful that it’s worth the risk to children. And it would be selfish to be all upset about it if it saves some child’s life.
I was giving them the chance to clarify their point, because they didn’t say anything beyond “nothing is safe” as a justification for poo-pooing an attempt to improve safety. Hence the question, which they have so far declined to answer themselves.
The point ContrarianTrail was making is that there is some risk in nearly everything. People have died as a result of garden tools, cars, house pets, shaving, buckets, toothpicks, baseball, etc. Here’s a list.
Yes, we all know “nothing is safe”. it’s a trivial point to make, and if that’s the only part of the situation you mention (as the person above did) you’re either not thinking very hard or are being deliberately misleading.
I prefer pull cords on my blinds, and I find the new regulations annoying. But I guess some federal agency decided they aren’t so useful that it’s worth the risk to children. And it would be selfish to be all upset about it if it saves some child’s life.
Exactly, it’s not that hard to understand. Pull-cord blinds cause deaths, and other reasonable alternatives do not. Framing the discussion to “100%” and dismissing accidents/deaths as anecdotes, to me, seems deliberately misleading. Yet you accuse me of being inflammatory by asking a follow up question. okay.
Remember, if something can’t be 100% improved, all improvement is worthless!
So by your logic if a collision from bicycle or even from people running isn’t 100% safe, then it’s as dangerous as car?
More like if you contextualize the incidents of bicycles and pedestrians with cars, you might realize they’re safer than you think. This is absolutely false for cars and pedestrians though in America at least.
contextualize how?
Well, nothing is 100% safe, and we allow plenty of things that are demonstrably unsafe to continue. So if you compare bike-car collisions against say, firearm suicides in the US, you’ll see that bike-car collisions aren’t that bad.
The fundamental argument is that nothing is totally safe, but some things are safer than others.
so by your logic since nothing is as bad as [choose any cause of death], we should just… give up on improving safety?
Does no threshold for the rate of any cause of death justify improving safety?
I legitimately don’t understand your question. If you’re asking if the cost to improve safety may be too great in some cases, yes that is true in some cases. But you haven’t made that case in this specific instance yet.
Nope.
Username checks out. If they weren’t so awful, maybe people would care about defending them, but there’s just all-around awful. They’re uglier, harder to use, and seem to frequently get damaged (probably mostly from people trying to fight with them or just bending them out of the way because damaging them is worth it to avoid dealing with them…
There’s always roller blinds for the ones among us to whom mini blinds are too difficult to use.
Is it that they’re “too difficult to use” or is it just that they’re a pain in the ass? Because it’s the latter in my experience.
In my experience, one begets the other.
It’s a pain in the ass because its difficult to use. Or, at least more difficult than it needs to be.
Yeah, but they also break really easily, and then you have the fun of either trying to get the string fixed or back on the track or whatever or just replacing the whole thing.
