We’ve all been there. We’ve built an amazing pillow fort for the kids using every couch cushion, chair cushion, blanket, and pillow in the living room and it’s a LOT of fun to play in. What started as a fun little idea of propping two cushions up with a blanket over the top has now turned into a pretty epic castle. Bring a snack and your phone inside and let the kids’ imaginations run wild—it’s quite an escape!

Unfortunately, it can’t stay like this for long. Sooner or later, you know this fort has to come down and you have to return to reality. Whether having your house torn apart makes you anxious, or you have company on the way over and they’ll need somewhere to sit, you have to face the music and take down the fort at some point.

Here are a few reasons to justify keeping a pillow fort up for a long amount of time.

• You honestly can’t remember where the fort components go. Some couches have cushions that have to go in particular places. It will be hard to piece it back together.
• It’s keeping the kids quiet and entertained. For the past hour, no one has fought, no one has screamed, and no one has claimed they’re bored.
• You found some missing items with everything torn apart. That long-lost remote, several dollars, three socks, and a screwdriver all turned up. Use this opportunity to keep digging around!
• You think this is a good opportunity to snap some photos that could be used on a stock photo site. The next time someone’s looking for a stock pic of a pillow fort, you earn a few bucks!
• You and your significant other want to “play in it” after the kids go to bed. It does look pretty fun, after all.
• A tornado is coming and this is honestly the best shelter your house provides.
• Small pets have taken residence inside the fort and you can’t find them. Tearing it down could somehow suffocate them. Wait until they emerge to take it down.
• Use this opportunity to do some much-needed cleaning. You could probably get five dust-buster loads of dirt from under the chair cushions. How did it get so dirty under there anyway?
• It took a really long time to build, and you need to keep it up longer to justify the work that went into building it.

A very limited topic, there just aren’t very many reasons to keep a pillow fort assembled in a major living area for more than an hour. The whole idea is to entertain kids, and if they’re more entertained than you imagined possible, keeping it in tact seems like a fantastic idea.

My Hot Take:
My wife and I have built a couple pillow forts recently for our 3-year-old son, but he was only entertained for a short amount of time. I also just get slight anxiety when things are out of place. He most likely is using the fort as a place to poop his pants in private, too.

tl;dr
Pillow forts are fun, but they should probably be taken down and the components put back in their rightful places in a timely manner.