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Dear Ivy,

We almost forwarded your question to the AT:Nursery team, since dangling cords from blinds and shades is a serious safety hazard in homes with kids (they can strangle on them) and as a result there are many products marketed to parents that help take up the cord slack. But then we remembered (doh!) that we dealt with this ourselves not long ago when Aeryn started walking, and here's what we found:

Most cord wind-ups are poorly made and tend to pop apart when you pull on the cord, so they simply don't deliver on their promise of convenience. We'd go with a more old-fangled solution: cord wraps. These little pieces of hardware mount on the frame of your window or door. You have to manually wind and unwind the excess cord each time you need to raise or lower the blinds, but they are a time-tested, simple design (used to tie down boats) with little opportunity for error.

You can get clear plastic blind cord wraps at any baby-proofing source (such as this one), or hardware store (try these).