As a recovering insomniac I've become a little obsessed with my sleep and how exactly I need to make it happen. These are the things that have been working for me, so far.
1. Get rid of the spouse: if your spouse snores, and it keeps you awake, go right on ahead and kill them. You have everything you need to carry out such a task right there with you in the bedroom. Just grab your pillow and hold it over their head until they stop breathing.You don't have to worry about disposing of the corpse until morning. An acid bath tends to work well for body removal.
Alternatively, you can ask your spouse to sleep in a separate room.
This has worked well for us on nights that I just NEED sleep. My husband is generally quite considerate when it comes to his snoring. He can sleep through anything. I know this to be true, while I have not yet actually killed him in his sleep, I do have to be quite creative in my attempts to stop his snoring. He's well over 6 feet tall and once he's out, he's out! At best, my attempts probably fall under the category of spousal abuse- but a girl needs to sleep. What do you want from me?!
2. Do not keep an eye on the time: this is a mistake that I make on a consistent basis. If I see that it is 3am I tend to get myself worked up about the amount of sleep I have not had and the amount of time I have left to get some sleep in. Then I become a crazy person fretting about the sleepy day I will have ahead and the sleep never actually happens. I just lie there awake telling myself to go to sleep and getting cross that I'm not.
3. Put the phone away: oh dear- guilty pleasure right there. While I am not sleeping I am researching. Anything from properties around the world to the mating rituals of humpback whales. It's a trap. While I know many a useless fact from my late night research sessions, my sleep becomes severely hindered. When I tuck that bad boy away I find that I sleep much better. With no distractions. Huzzah!
4. White noise is your friend: I'm one of those people that wakes up to the slightest sound, convinced that we are being broken into and we are all going to die. White noise tends to drown out all those sounds so I can get to sleep. It's great.
Unless of course someone does actually break into our house and we all die. Then perhaps it's not so good.
5. Wind down: Our whole household starts shutting down around 7pm. We pack up, clean up, dim the lights and put on some quiet music. This is when I try and get into the mind set that sleep will happen and that sleep is good. While we don't enforce a strict bedtime we do like to stick to this routine. It works well for us.
Of course there are days when this just can't happen and we just go with it. But I'm telling you- it makes a huge difference when I allow myself and my family time to wind down and get relaxed.
*please don't kill your spouse. I can't have bodies linked back to me...
