When we moved into this house, it was with the understanding that the mangled filthy mini-blinds would vacate immediately, if not sooner.
I could have cleaned them 7 months ago but I knew we would be replacing them AT ANY MOMENT so I didn’t bother.
My solution has been to keep them up at all times so I don’t have to constantly be faced with the previous owner’s dinner splatter from the great spaghetti adventure of 1991.
Consequently, the squirrels in the forest behind our house are constantly faced with me shlepping around in my bathrobe. But dude, they’re naked and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them putting on deodorant. So why don’t they get some blinds and stop yelling at me?
Our heating bill for the last 2 months indicates that any measure we could take to reduce energy consumption would be for the benefit of society and may keep us from losing the farm. So we’ve decided to close the blinds at night to help keep the heat in.
It’s actually working but tonight I closed them too early. I sat at dinner, staring at a flat spider body, pressed perfectly between the metal blinds like a daisy in a poetry book, only spookier and less appetizing. I stared at it for 10 minutes before I got up to get a paper towel. The spider is gone now and I’m even thinking about taking some Pine-sol and a blow-torch to those things.
Considering that we’re now counting all of our expenses in terms of hours of preschool, making do with the blinds we have may be our ticket to Laylee’s pre-K education.
Here’s my tip for the day: Take the blinds down, put them in the bathtub, spray them generously with Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner, let set a few minutes, then hose them off. They will look much better (maybe not new, but better) and it should wash away anyother squished creepy crawlies with minimum effort…and isn’t that what’s important? Minimum effort!
Those squirrels just don’t respect personal space do they… I like Farm Wife’s solution, may have to try that myself.
You had me at “dinner splatter”. I like Farm Wife’s idea too, up to the point where she said “put them in the bathtub”.
Those stinkin blinds, they do hold in the heat, don’t they? Otherwise mine would be gone as well.
Cleaning blinds is the worst and I am a clean freak. That is one thing I would hire a maid to do. Just a one time deal.
As for the heating bill, I can totally relate. We are in the South Sound and it has been soooooo freakin’ cold. What has happened to our mild winters? I feel so bad for turning our heat up to *gasp,* 74 degrees. But gosh darn it, I shouldn’t have to wear a sweater, coat and gloves in my own house!
I second the bathtub idea. You could do one shade a day for a few days. Sometimes I have to commit to doing just 10 minutes worth of a job I’ve been dreading– usually then I’m involved and can finish it. For me, anyway, getting started is the biggest part of the battle
Mary, whose 8 year old wiped down her kitchen blinds yesterday. (I lay ill on the couch– or at least it was a good excuse to not do it myself)
Sadly, we have a large flattened spider directly above the lower hinge of our front door, tucked tidily in the door jam. I know it’s there because every time I open the door for any length of time, I notice it.
but DUDE it is COLD out there.. so maybe I’ll get that nasty black smoosh come springtime when I can stand to have the door opened for longer than ten seconds at a shot. Maybe.
The bathtub is the only way to go with dirty blinds. I am so discouraged with the pace of our household renovations that I am… well, pretty discouraged.
Well, at least if you washed them, at least it would be your spaghetti goo, and somehow that makes a difference, that one lives only with ones own goo.
I love the “splatter from the great spaghetti adventure of 1991” image. When I was a teenager we thought we’d test out the theory that you can tell if your spaghetti is finished cooking by throwing some of it onto the ceiling. If it sticks, it’s done. Anyway, I think the noodle residue stayed up there for YEARS.
I talked to some people who run one of those cleaning services that come to your house and clean for you, and they told me that it would be cheaper to buy new blinds than to hire them to clean them.
ggggrrrrrrreeeaaaaaat.
At least Laylee didn’t decide to break your blinds into little pieces for fun while stuck in her crib to nap!
I don’t have very many blinds in my house and I really want some in my front rooms. You can see in my house when driving by, lol.
I would not have been able to clean up the spider remains. I was playing a game where I had to find spiders in an eye spy game, and every spider I “spied” made me queasier and quasier until I almost passed out!
I won’t go see Charlotte’s Web, either, because a spider on the big screen larger than life, well, lets just say that I’d terrify the kids in there with my screams.
“the great spaghetti adventure of 1991”
Oh yes, that must have been good times!
I second (or third or fourth) the idea of scrubbing them in the tub. Even better if you can use a shower head to spray them off. That is what we did to make the blinds bearable when we moved into our new home two years ago.
Another idea…have you looked at IKEA curtains? They are insanely cheap, and they’re beautiful.
we have it worse… our worst blinds are in the lone bathroom. which overlooks the postage stamp battleground of our hideous backyard. we can’t leave the blinds open, so we turn them to the backside, which is slightly less heinous.
but! seriously! after reading the first comment, i got off my bum and tore down the bathroom blinds! i’m hoping scrubbing bubbles will do the trick (going to get some later) because the stuff i used helped, but not perfectly. i’d take a picture as proof, but the bathtub is aparently also in need of attention. amazing what it looks like when all of the bath toys are (ack! and then my husband unexpectedly came home from work while i was typing this and i looked like a lazy bum!) picked up.
how do you dry the blinds? let them lay in the tub till they’re dry? i used to lie them on a tarp in the driveway, but we don’t have a driveway anymore. then i tried rigging them to the back fence, but they always fell. grrr.
Oh, I can so relate to this… We moved into our house over the summer, with the explicit understanding that although the previous owner was kind enough to leave his “window treatments” behind as part of the sale, they would be the first things out of this house upon our arrival.
Six months later…they’re still there. Little specks of who know’s what are splattered on them (though, they’re in the living room, so I’m really quite confused as to what on earth was splattering out there) – but the worst part is simply the style of them. Firstly, they’re clearly kitchen curtains – the type that you would put up on the window above your sink. They have a flowerly blue and pink pattern and are poofy and look like a fat lady bending over and showing me her bloomers every time I walk into the living room. *shudder*
This post reminded me of one of my husband’s stories of when he was a Mormon missionary in the deep south (US). He lived for a while in an apartment which was particularly scuzzy — there was a wall in the kitchen where for a long time, when missionaries would smash a roach, they would leave the carcass on the wall and mark the date beside it. Maybe to serve as a warning to future roach passers-by. Makes spaghetti adventures seem kind of tame in comparison, doesn’t it? Of course, mentioning this experience does mean I in no way condone the cruel, heartless smashing of innocent roaches. I don’t want to offend any of your roach-loving readers!
My fear is ants. I have been known to leave a few of the dead ants behind in my (insane) belief that this will scare off the next scouts that come. I know it’s weird, but it seems to work. My hubby thinks that it’s just the 409 I sprayed on them to stop them in their tracks that is stopping the newcomers, but I think it’s their fear of the massive carnage that they see before them.
And bathtub cleaning of blinds is the only way to go. I think to dry them I would hang them over the shower rod, twist fully closed and dry one side, twist the other way and dry the other side, rehang. But I’ve only done it in the spring/summer when it’s warm so I’ve just carried them back in a bath towel, rehung and then done the twist & dry.