As a rule, Peter will fight me about adding any kind of gadget or gizmo to our house, but I recently snuck a white noise machine in and it’s made a huge difference for our sleep quality. Since we’ve been at home a lot more these past few months, it’s been easier to think about how to dial in our at-home sleep environment. Normally, we’re on the road so much that it almost doesn’t matter / any additions we make are more personal, i.e a sleep mask and earplugs, that can come with us from place to place. But now, we’re trying to make the home more ideal for sleep. That means cool, dark and quiet in the bedroom.
http://ConsummateAthlete.com/the-blocks-keeping-you-from-a-good-night-of-sleep/
But quiet is sort of a moving target. If you live near a road as we do / you sleep with someone who occasionally snores / you have a puppy who moves around at night, keeping a room deadly silent is actually more disruptive than soothing because every little noise is super obvious. During the summer, this wasn’t as noticeable because we had a fan on all night. As temps dropped, though, the fan was too chilly, so we turned it off.
And the lack of background noise drove me nuts. We actually ended up turning the fan around so it made noise but didn’t freeze us for a while, and that helped but I felt like it was such a waste of power.
I finally ordered this simple white noise generator off of Amazon (under $30!), and it’s been a gamechanger. You can choose your sound, from rain to train (seriously) to fans to white noise, and it has a USB plug so it’s super easy to plug in next to your phone (hopefully set in airplane mode) without wasting an outlet.
We’ve been sleeping a ton better since this provides just enough backdrop to smooth out random car + puppy noise. Honestly, I would bring this with me on the road if I was traveling anywhere for any more than a night or two, it’s so useful.
(Psst… We also wrote A LOT about sleep in our new book, Becoming A Consummate Athlete, if you want to learn more about making your sleep environment more optimal.)
READ MORE: Bamboo Sheets Are My New Favorite Things (for Camping + Regular Life)
http://ConsummateAthlete.com/bamboo-sheets-are-my-new-favorite-things-for-camping-regular-life/
