Blind Cord Wind-ups

Hello Everyone
I just wanted to share my experience with buying blind cord wind-ups. When my son became mobile, we wanted to find a way to safely get the blind cords from our mini-blinds up and out of the way. Our first try was to buy the blind cord wind-ups by Safety 1st. They are AWFUL! First, you must manually turn them up and down when you want to raise or lower the blinds. Secondly, they always pop open and the cords come out and are in a tangled mess. Lastly, they don't work very well and are more of a pain than a help.
We then ordered the Blind Wind-ups found in the One Step Ahead catalog. These blind wind-ups look like small retractable measuring tapes and work along that principle. You insert the cords into a tab, press a button and the cord is retracted or released so you can easily and quickly raise or lower the blinds. At $5 per winder, not cheap, but it was exactly what I had been searching weeks for. I ordered 3 sets ( they come in sets of 4). Well, at first, these worked great! They were quick and easy to install and made raising and lowering the blinds a snap. The cords were safely up and out of the way, no more worrying about the baby strangling on a cord. After a month of use, they started to fail. Some would just stop widing as much as they used to, some stopped winding at all, some ate the blind cords and you had to pry them open, which destroys them, just to get at the blind cords..
Our third try was to order the SECUR blind wind-ups from www.babyhomesafety.com These are for venetian blinds, but work great on the mini blinds we have. They are super easy to use and the best part, they open up so you can fix any problems and also rewind them should they loose their tension. They are expensive, near $7 per one, but worth it. Much higher quality too.

Well, I just wanted to share in the hopes that it may save someone else the hassle and the $$

Chantal

OK,call me cheap and picky but when we had our Hunter Douglas roller shades installed (they have a continuous loop or circle rope adjuster) we looked at the device HD sent with them to "secure" them and said ut-uh. Has to be secured to the wall/frame (ours are aluminum and bullnosed) and their device was plastic and cheap. Yuck.

So, our installer grabbed one of the white plastic safety pin-like things that were on our temporary redi-blinds, rolled up the cord, and clipped it. Voila! No screws, etc. in my nice new walls/frames and the cord is well above reach (it was anyway, but we can use them just to be safe).

Just a thought,