Light-Blocking Shades

One of the difficult aspects of our new house is figuring out what to do for window treatments. Honestly, the house is not designed to sport window treatments well. The windows in Henry’s room, for example, push right up to the wall making it impossible to hang a curtain without closing off some of the window or they are insanely wide, making it cost-prohibitive to purchase some type of roller-shade or blinds. We knew all of this when we purchased the designs for the house (and even made some of the existing windows bigger!), but we didn’t make the house more window treatement-friendly because we generally don’t use many window treatments anyway. In our Houston bungalow, we left the shades open nearly all the time.

But my toddler and nap times don’t get along well without a darkened room. Even if we had blinds or a rollershade on Henry’s windows, we would still probably want something to close around the edges (especially when he goes to bed when it’s still light out in the summer months). In our rental house, we closed the blinds and then hung a blanket on some hooks that were designed to hold a valence. 

In our new house–while we figure out the window treatment situation (which is one item on a list of about 5,008)–we decided to concoct a temporary solution (that will still be useful in the long-run). We purchased light-blocking fabric from JoAnn’s (which was amazingly 50% off!) and sewed magnets into the edges. The edges around our windows are magnetic, so our big strips of fabric stick right to the edge. It’s easy to put them up and take them down for naps and bedtimes. When we take them down, we fold them and hang them on hangers in the closet. The rest of the day we can enjoy the natural light. 

Voilà! 

In the future, we might paint them to look a little prettier (maybe with stripes or clouds), but for now I’m just cutting myself some slack and being thankful when we can keep the dishes from our frozen-pizza dinner clean.