Our house is where bed linens go to die.
It is beyond ridiculous. Enter my closet and you will find an abundance of old comforters, worn sheets, mismatched pillowcases, and scratchy throws. We could probably open a homeless shelter in our backyard if we so desired. We don’t.
Actually we have more sheets than all the other linens combined. We have inherited sheets from our parents, been given sheets as a gift, and received my sisters’ old college sheets.
I choose to ignore any subtle hint they are sending about the state of the bedding in my house.
The sheets leave our house at a very slow rate. If they ever escape it was via the Goodwill box so we have a large stack of sheets in my closet. Stack might be a nice term to describe the linen mess. It is actually a huge pile of sheets thrown every which way. I believe being able to see your closet floor is highly over rated. Technically, I think the experts call it protecting your carpet. After all, I do have children pooping in my closet.
After reading about Fort Fridays on All About Boys I was inspired to make good use of the old sheets and create a massive tent for the kids. The size of the previous tents constructed have been restricted to the size of the sheet, often leading to yelling and complaining, “He pulled the tent down!” Factor in space taken up for chairs to hold the tent up and the actual sitting space is quite limited.
So….I started with 1 king top sheet, 1 queen top sheet, and 3 pillow cases.
I sewed them together on my machine in a haphazard fashion refusing to pin anything. It took, ten minutes at the most.
The result was a massive section of material roughly 10 feet x 25 feet. I could be exaggerrating here. I am just taking a guess. Put a queen sheet and a king sheet together and you will have the exact measurements.
The pillow cases spaced out created nice entry points into the tent.
When I peeked into the tent I saw this – Alex reading to Caroline while she sat quietly and listened. I am now putting him in charge of nap time.
The boys have requested I add another sheet onto the tent. I will certainly comply if it means more time pretending and less time asking to play the computer.
Any tents in your house this summer?
I love it..the simplest things are always the best. Their imaginations actually get used. At the pool the other day actually heard boys no older than Alex talking about their face book pages…..where they access all their e-mail,etc..America was always an innovative nation and now we are becoming shockingly narcissistic with our every burp worthy of headline news or so we believe.
That is a great idea! My grandmother had a WIDE hall in her house and had “blanket boxes” on both sides of the hallway. They were anchored to the floor. My cousin and I would pull out the blankets and put the edges under the lid of the box and create our fort! We had a great time and did this for years as kids. Great memories from my grandmother’s house! You are helping your kids make great memories too!
This is such a wonderful idea! The kids looks so peaceful…I can’t imagine it stayed that way!?! Hehe. Oh, and Rhonda is right – you are helping the kids make great memories that will last a lifetime! I still remember building forts under our “bunk beds”…
Our A/C has been out for a week, so we are playing our version of sweat lodge!
LOVE it! I love that you sewed the pieces together – genius!
GENIOUS!
respect the tent… Thanks for linking up to Mad Skills Monday!