A new classroom with windows means finding an awesome solution for curtains! A sweet teacher offered up a dollar store curtain hack I knew I had to try! Check out this Dollar Store Curtain Hack that will make your pocket book look fat while keeping your classroom cool.

What You Need

Buy Dollar store table cloths. I chose a rainbow of colors since black primary colors is the theme of my classroom. (You can see my whole classroom design here.) I needed 5 curtains per window. I bought extras just in case. Each package of table cloths cost $1, bringing the total to $5 a window or $10 total before the tension rod. (They didn’t have a great orange color, so I opted to skip that color.)

You will also need a tension rod to fit your window. Since I have cinder block walls, I opted for this black shower curtain rods from Amazon. I wanted the thicker rod since I had planned something different for this window originally. You can find cheaper and thinner tension rods around as well. I liked this thinner version as well.

Decide on your length

Decide how much of the window you need covered. The plastic table cloths I got were rectangular. Use the shorter part to hang the tension rod from to create a longer curtain. Use the longer part to create a shorter curtain. You can also trim the table cloth to make it any shape in between.

Since I still desired lots of natural light, I chose to attach the longer end of the table cloth to my tension rod to create a shorter window covering.

Prepare the table cloth

Lay out the curtain. Fold down the side you want to attach to the tension rode. Make sure you fold down the whole side to make it even. Since I used a thicker tension rode, I needed a few inches of space so the rode can fit inside it. Keep your tension rod size in mind when folding. 

Staple down the fold

Take a stapler and staple down the fold. Apply as many as you care to. I chose to apply a staple every few inches. This method will go quickly and easily.

Fold and staple each table cloth you desire to use. Notice the white circle shows you where another staple was placed.

Assembly

Stand up and put one side of my tension rod on the ground. Feed the pocket you created with the table cloths and stapled through the rod. Push down on the plastic curtain slightly to make room for more!

Continue with the next color and so on. You can easily add more or less table cloths depending on how full you desire your curtains to be. These plastic table cloths still let in light and if you use LESS table cloths, I believe you would get more light. Is you used more table cloths, you would get less light.

Here is an image of the assembled curtains on the ground.

Installing the Curtains

Now, I took the tension rod and put it up in the window sill. Since I opted for a thicker shower curtain style, this took me several minutes to adjust the length and get it tight in the space. Once the tension rod was in place, I fluffed the plastic curtains and spread the colors out to make them even. Since the color greed was in the middle, I made use to use the middle of my tension rod with green and arrange the colors evenly on both sides.

If your curtains are too long, you can also use scissors to trim them up to the desired length.

Before and After Picture of Dollar Store Curtains

You can see this before and after image of the curtains in my classroom. Notice how much light still comes through the window.

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