Well, summer has arrived in Monroe. The National Weather Service is reporting temperatures in the 90s starting today.

My husband and I cannot get through the summer without air conditioning. Long before we had central air, we used window air conditioner units and ceiling fans to control the heat.

Our house does not catch much of a breeze when we open the screens. We have a programmable thermostat, but adjusting the temperature during the day is pointless when someone is home almost round the clock because we are on different work schedules.

We do run ceiling fans in both bedrooms and keep all the interior doors open as much as possible to encourage good air flow. And with the daughter away for much of the summer, I’ve closed the curtains in her bedroom to limit the sunshine that goes into there. (If we close the drapes in the living / dining part of the house, it gets quite dark and we feel a bit claustrophobic.)

But here’s something else I did two summers ago, and this morning put up again: dark paper window “shades” in the master bedroom.

Our bedroom has hand-me-down white lacy curtains. They’re pretty against the dark red walls. We plan to get wooden shutters to go under the curtains, but that’s not in the budget right now. We have white paper temporary shades on the bottom half of the windows for privacy.

During much of the day, a lot of sunshine comes into the room from the top of the two windows. This is fine during the winter, but not as appealing in the summer.

Two summers ago, I went through my craft supplies, and put up a few sheets of dark brown paper along the top of both windows. I took the paper down when it was no longer needed. Today I put up a few sheets of black paper on one window.

I didn’t cover the window entirely, or as much as I did two years ago. I just ran the paper across the top of the window. We still want some natural light, but not so much sunshine that the bedroom heats up way more than the rest of the house.

What will the neighbors think about tacky paper window shades? Well, you can’t see that window from the street or the alley. You would only see it if you walked between two houses. I think a contractor was the last “visitor” to walk past that window.

In other words, who’s going to notice?