I've lived in a lot of different houses and apartments. One thing that I always considered a pain in the neck was curtains. I don't want to carry curtains around with me from place to place. But on the other hand a lot of places don't have curtains in them. This leads to interesting problems.
Hi and welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode 323. These podcasts are an excellent source of extensive English listening where you can expand your listening vocabulary. Today's podcast episode is all about curtains.
Curtains are expensive. Take it from me. I've moved from one place to the next quite a bit, and I looked into the cost of curtains. In many situations I simply didn't buy curtains because the cost is prohibitive. Don't get me wrong, I think that they are beautiful and I'd like to have them but they cost too much, especially if you don't intend to stay living in that residence for more than a year or two.
I was amazed at just how much of a difference curtains can make to a room. They can really make it look a lot nicer, warmer, and more human and full of feeling. If you ever want to change the interior decoration of your house, start with the curtains.
They have an amazingly dramatic effect on the atmosphere of the room. When I say curtains, of course I don't mean just curtains, but I also want to include blinds in this category. Basically any kind of window cover that can be used to filter or cut out the light. This brings us to our next topic
Curtains are light blocking. I suppose that’s self-evident but let's take a closer look. We want the curtains closed at night so people can't look in our rooms when we have the lights on. It's blocking light. In this case it's blocking light from going out of the windows. On the other hand in the daytime when it's bright outside, sometimes you want it to be darker inside the room. This is especially true if you're using screens and you have bright lights shining in and you can't see the screen very well. so light blocking goes two ways.
As I mentioned I have lived in many places, and I didn't always buy curtains. So this brings up the question what do you do? Well you do it yourself. That means you find makeshift alternatives to store bought curtains. This could be a bed sheet, or an old blanket of some kind. Or even a flag. I once had a Canadian flag mounted in one of my windows for the longest time simply because I didn't want to buy curtains. I had an extra flag lying about for no particular reason and I thought I'd put it to use in the window blocking the light. None of these do it yourself solutions are as good as real permanent curtains though. They don't look as good and they don't act as good, so if you have the space, go and get real curtains, and make yourself happy. If you like listening to English for your extensive English listening
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I’d love it if you made a comment below, too.
Tell me if you have ever done do-it-yourself curtains.