In July of 2024 the brain trust that is our nanny state decided the cords used to control our window blinds were so dangerous they had to be eliminated. Apparently they were choking kids and pets to death in numbers not to be believed.

They are difficult to adjust the length. The spring loaded cord disappears into the frame never to be seen again.

They work sometimes at first then they quit altogether.

Worse, my wife hates them.

Oh how I for simple old blinds. Of course, they still available special order i.e. expensive

Kinda like those stupid gas cans we now can only buy.

I can’t stand them either but I do know two people who had children strangled to death by the cords.

My blind dog got tangled in the cord once. He panicked and bolted, tore the whole thing down. Crash. He wasn't hurt, but I had to get new blinds. That said, after reading a little about them I don't think I'd want the cordless type. Just one more gadget to go wrong.

Yep, all new blinds are cordless, buy quality, had two that were not opened but a few times a year to clean, they stopped working.

Be sure to open and close them monthly to keep the internal mechanism operational...

I can see a child somehow getting tangled up in a continuous loop blind cord but just use separate cords with a weighted pull on each cord.

I just doubled up the cords and hung them back up out of reach of kids.
My cats trashed the blinds frequently so I went cheap.

Even "quality" cordless blinds suck. I have a special order one that's wide. The wife and I YET AGAIN need to take it down and rewind it, by hand, to get it to operate. Almost 200 bucks (Levelor) and it lasted about 18 months.

Haha.. I have a house full of cordless blinds that work great! I've had them for years and they have performed flawlessly. Of course, now that I've said it out loud, they will become problematic.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
I can’t stand them either but I do know two people who had children strangled to death by the cords.

Damn. Sorry Leemur. That is just horrible.

Many many years ago, I was at a church youth camp. Being young and silly, someone started a mass "chase" around the compound. The fellowship meeting area was on a concrete pad, with a canvas overhead roof and roll up sides of the same material. I blazed through the meeting area, running across to the sidewalk on the other side, and pushed through the unrolled side panels at one of the tiny gaps.

I found myself swinging from the cords used to raise the side panels. Somehow I had pushed through right where the loop in the cord was hanging. I'll never forget swinging off my feet and grasping for the cord to eliminate the frictional pain.

So, there can be benefits, I suppose, to safety legislation.

Sorry you're all twisted up.
Oh, wait, you have some random blind with a cord that disappears? That sounds made up or broken.

I just put new blinds in, 9 windows total. The cost to get power remote operation was about $400.

Blinds are expensive already. This was a nominal amount to the whole project. Make your life easier.