The Magic of Blackout Curtains

I was not a believer in the magic of black out curtains before.  I believed in teaching your baby to sleep with some amount of light and noise. And though I still believe that to be true, living in 600 square feet with a baby and a toddler has changed things a bit.

This situation may be unique to our apartment but I wanted to share anyway.  Our one bedroom, that is now the shared kids room has two sliding frosted glass doors. Theo was such a good sleeper (I know, go ahead and roll your eyes at us) that we could close the frosted glass doors and just turn off a few of the lights in the apartment and he would sleep (even through dinner parties). But the coordination of two bedtimes and some crib naps in the day for Mae have led me to desire more darkness for their room.  

I hummed and hawed about options for the doors...replace the frosted glass ones with solid white ones? replace them with wood ones to add warmth to the space? Add snaps and canvas like the Ace Hotel?  In the end I purchased two roll down, white, black out blinds from Ikea (here is the link).  Trevor installed them quickly and we are so happy with this budget option.  I almost didn't get them because with our high ceilings, everything in our home is a custom size.  The rolldown blinds stop short about 5" from the bottom of the glass.  While aesthetically this drives me a bit crazy, it actually provides a small amount of light into the room, similar to two night lights. 

A few things I love about these simple additions are:  I can make the room darker for naps for Mae during the day.  At night we can leave the lights on in our kitchen for easier clean up. Also it allows us to work at the dining table at night with lights on whereas before we had to work on the couch in low light.  I like that I can roll them up during the day and use the sliding glass doors as normal and also to keep the roll downs away from baby hands.

And as usual with most changes we make to our space, I wish I had done this the moment Mae was born!  If you are thinking of making a small change to your small space that might make you or your babies more comfortable...do it!