I have fond childhood memories of building forts in the living room with my brothers. Building forts with the dining room chairs was the Deluxe Fort edition. It involved moving the chairs and finding blankets, and when you're a bunch of little kids, this can be a daunting task.

Our preferred building materials were sofa cushions.

Not all sofas have removable cushions, but if yours do, I highly recommend them. Sofa cushions are like big soft building blocks with no sharp corners. We had two sofas which had three cushions apiece. Our method of construction involved placing a cushion upright on the outer edge of the sofa, and placing another from the top of the cushion to the top of the couch, making an upside-down L-shape. Place another two cushions beside that and you have an instant padded tunnel with windows at both ends.

For a really big fort, you make the walls out of cushions and blankets for the roof, but this makes for a less stable fort. Of course, knocking down forts and rebuilding them is one of the great joys of building forts out of soft materials. Many times my brothers would take flying leaps onto the cushions, scattering them everywhere. Then we would rebuild the fort into something else. Adding beanbags to the mix makes things even more fun. (Beanbags make awesome moats.)

So, with couch cushions, a couple of blankets, and maybe a footstool or two, you can have a completely kid-friendly fort that is all padded, and no worrying about a chair falling over and hitting somebody in the head. You might need to clean out from under the sofa cushions, though. There's nothing more fun than finding old Halloween candy in June.

Learn more about this author, Kessie Carroll.
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