I'm not lying when I say that I was panting and sweating as I lugged blankets around the room, trying different combinations to see what would work and what would actually remain standing.
rule number one of fort building: tables and chairs create the best framework
I first tried to use a clothesline to hold up the blankets and then spread them out by pinning down the sides by books on my bed, but the line was not able to hold up the weight of my purple fuzzy blanket that I draped over it. The other difficulty was that I was using thumbtacks to hold the clothesline up, which just wasn't cutting it. My second attempt was to use our TV trays as a framework. It worked until the fort was completed, taking up 80% of my floor and forcing me to creatively crawl around on my desk and bed to get to the back of my room. I finally army crawled inside my fort and was immediately met with the terrified experience of having everything cave in on me. It was like an avalanche of books, TV trays, and blankets trying to smother me. I yelped for help, but my brother was too busy playing minecraft and ignoring me, so I was forced to dig my way out. After that endeavor, I decided that I needed chairs, even though my room didn't seem like it was big enough to fit any other sort of furniture in it. I managed to squeeze in our family's card table and one other chair to serve as support, along with my desk chair, bookshelf, and bed. With my brother's help (who wants to be an architect someday so now he was interested in what I was doing), we pinned down one side along my bed with heavy books and clothespins, the other side tucked into a network of chairs, and the third also pinned down to my bookshelf with heavy books and my owl figurine. I had already covered the floor in blankets and pillows, meaning that there were literally zero other blankets and pillows throughout the rest of the house. Forts require A LOT of material.
rule number two of fort building: use clothespins to attach blankets together to avoid sketchy patchwork
I like forts to be completely covered, though I have seen a few that are "open air" that also appealed to me. Mostly though, I feel safest when in an enclosed space and more excited when I feel like I have this secret space all to myself. This is why I used clothespins and chip bag clips to pin together the network of quilts, blankets, and duvets to ensure more stability in the roof. In order to lift the part of the fort where we could enter, we ended up tying the clothesline around a section of blanket and then stringing it tight by tying the other end to a coat rack in the hallway. Resourceful! I then army crawled my way inside once again and was pleasantly content to find that it was not falling down on me this time.
rule number three of fort building: make sure there's some sort of light source in there
It might seem that the pictures one sees on weheartit.com with forts covered in fairy lights are pretentious and hipstery, but those fairy lights actually serve a purpose. In my case, at least, it was pitch black inside my fort. Even with the light on in my room. I ended up just using my laptop as a shining beacon, but it would have been handy (and possibly magical) if my fort had fairy lights inside of it. It crossed my mind to hang them inside, but I was too lazy to have any desire to destroy my room any more just to put lights inside my new fort.
rule number four of fort building: make sure to build the fort big enough for more than one person if more than one person desires to play in the fort
I assumed I would be the only one hanging out in my fort, but my brother really wanted to watch Disney movies in it with me, so I relented. Unfortunately, the Disney movie I REALLY wanted to watch (Hunchback of Notre Dame) was not working in my mini TV that I use to play Gamecube on, so instead we went to Dreamworks and watched Road to Eldorado on my laptop. There was not enough room for both of us in there. I contorted my body in a way I thought impossible in order to give my legs enough room to stretch with the both of us in there, which also resulted in being in contact with the freezing cold metal of the table's legs at all points during the movie. Eventually, our bodies sort of melded with the fort so we could ignore it, but at the beginning it was ridiculous.
Halfway through the movie, my brother declared that he was going to bed and slowly backed out of the fort. I gathered the dogs (my parents were out of town) and shut them in my room as I tried to find a version of Hunchback on youtube to watch (I really wanted to see it). Taffy and Winston hung out in the fort for awhile, but then Taffy started gazing around at her surroundings and sort of panicked, panting and whining. Finally, she found a weak link in the outer layer of my duvet and instead waited outside the fort. Winston followed her lead and also decided to lay down outside the fort while I found a version of Hunchback that I could tolerate and started watching it (completely random, but the version I found was one that a guy made for his sister's birthday where he re-dubbed all of the male voices AND songs in his own voice. It. Is. HILARIOUS. But it's the only full version of the movie on youtube and also turned out to be of great comedic value, especially since he couldn't really fluctuate emotions...at all). At about 3:30 AM, I decided that sleeping in the fort was a no-go since my back was killing me and ripped it down before curling up in my bed.
Still, fort time was fun! My plan is to make a bigger one next time not in my room (because trying to get to other things with a fort dominating the floor is a bitch).
Here are some fort ideas that I might utilize in the future (to make my fort experience even better)
To end
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