Having a nighttime routine is essential for everyone. Sleep routine helps your brain switch to sleep mode easily and fast. Sleep routines entail that you go to bed at a particular time of the night every day, and wake up at a fixed time too. It puts you in charge of your own sleep without compromising your ability to have good and quality sleep that does not encroach into your productive time.
The importance of having good sleep cannot be over-emphasized. You might be finding it extremely hard to initiate sleep when you want to. This is what we refer to as “Insomnia“, which is defined as a lack of sleep.
Whereas insomnia could result from a number of factors, studies have shown that environmental factors can greatly affect the quality of sleep an individual has every night. By extension, even your bed and nightstand accessories can affect your sleep and consequently, your sleep routine.
Another major contributory factor that can affect your sleep quality is your sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene refers to the maintenance of habits that promotes a good night’s sleep and avoid those that disturb your sleep. This includes habits like excessive consumption of caffeine at bedtime.
It was important that I mentioned insomnia and sleep hygiene while talking about sleep routine here because having a perfect sleep routine, – that is, being able to sleep when you need to and wake when you are supposed to –, you first need to optimize your sleep environment to help you initiate and have good quality sleep throughout your sleep time. Your nightstand is one of those things that can be very helpful for your sleep routine and shortly, you will see some nightstand accessories that can make that possible.
Why Do You Need A Good Sleep Routine?
There are several reasons (biologic and social-economic) why you need to have a proper sleep routine each day. But for several reasons, most people have altered sleep routines. These altered sleep routines could be related to falling asleep – finding it difficult to initiate sleep – or waking up at a set time – sleeping beyond their target waking time and these may affect a lot of things.
Here are some reasons why you need a good sleep routine;
- Keeps you in control of your time
- Makes you more productive
- Adapts your body to perform optimally
- Keeps you early for work every day
- Helps you get adequate and refreshing sleep, etc
In the next section, I am going to show you 5 nightstand accessories that will help your sleep routine.
Essential Nightstand Accessories To Help Your Sleep Routine
The bedroom is a vital area of your home where you start the day (wake up from sleep) and end the day (go to sleep). It is therefore very important that you deliberately design it to have a good impact on your sleep. You should pay specific attention to the items and furniture you have around your room and bed, and how these could affect your sleep or overall bedroom space.
A healthy sleep routine helps you maintain a fixed rhythm in your life. Your nightstand and other furniture can make a huge impact, so you can check out how to buy modern furniture that will best fit in your bedroom to make sleep more enjoyable as well as optimize your bedroom space.
Now, let’s head on to five essential nightstand accessories you need to have to help you maintain a good sleep routine.
1. A drawer
If you have a nightstand that does not have a drawer, then you need to consider changing it as soon as you can. The design of your nightstand should include a place where you can stash some items like smartphones when it’s time to sleep. As part of your bedtime routine, you have to put those devices away, and having a drawer on your nightstand can be useful for this.
If you have a habit of using your phone just before sleeping, you should consider choosing a nightstand or bedtable that has an electric outlet so you can immediately keep your device in your nightstand drawer when you are done, without having to take a walk.
The bottom line is, that you want to avoid as many distractions as possible and this is where having an inbuilt drawer on your nightstand can affect your sleep routine.
2. Space for books
As part of your nighttime routine, you may have a good habit of reading books before bedtime. However, you do not want to sleep with the book in bed or throw it on the floor when you are ready to sleep but this is the case if your nightstand does not have adequate room to accommodate the book after reading it.
Even if you are not the bedtime reader type, you may need to keep your journal or to-do list somewhere close so you can easily see it first thing tomorrow morning. By the way, journaling helps you sleep soundly as it allows you to put down your worries away just before you sleep. So you should have enough space on your nightstand to keep your books, journal, and to-do list when you are ready to sleep.
3. A bedside lamp
For avid bedtime readers, journal-keepers, and to-do list planners, there is no way you would need a bedside lamp on your nightstand or at most, a wall sconce light above it to give you light when you are reading or writing as the case may be. Once you are done, you can easily switch it off and lie on your bed to sleep.
You don’t need a large room light that lights up every corner of your room at night-time, because it can affect your biological clock and delay your sleep time. This can alter your sleep routine. In contrast, a bedside lamp is just good enough to give you enough light for book-work and small enough to prevent too much light from affecting your biological clock.
Another important thing to consider is the color of the lamp and if you can adjust the brightness when you want to sleep. You don’t want a blue light and one that does not allow you to make it dim when you want to sleep. Blue light exposure makes your biological clock in the brain (often referred to as the Pineal gland) think that it is still daytime. Thus making it harder for you to fall asleep. You should avoid blue light exposures during bedtime, coupled with the fact that blue light might also affect your eyes when reading or writing using it.
4. A tray or coaster
One important environmental factor that can enhance your sleep quality is having a clutter-free bed space. Having enough space in your room can psychologically enhance and help your sleep, studies have shown. A nightstand already takes up some of your room space but if it has a tray or coaster, it can help absorb many other items or objects that can make the environment untidy and cluttered.
A tray on your nightstand can accommodate your jewelry, coral glasses, and other small ornaments that you may have worn before going to bed. You can then empty the tray upon waking up in the morning if the ornaments belonged somewhere else.
Additionally, if you enjoy taking chamomile tea before you sleep (not caffeine-containing tea, as they affect your sleep), you keep the teacup on a cup coaster on your nightstand while coasting over your pillow to have a good drift to sleep. You can use a coaster with a rim around it, placing it inside the tray while preventing any spills on your jewelry on the other side of the tray.
5. An alarm clock
Finally, you need an alarm clock on your nightstand too. Most of the others nightstand accessories I talked about earlier help your sleep routine by helping you fall asleep. However, the other aspect of sleep routine which involves waking up when it’s time to do may require that you have an alarm clock.
Sleeping early when you need to is important because if you do not sleep early, you might not wake up early, and even when you do, you will not be refreshed enough for the day. But sometimes, after sleeping early and adequately, you might need an alarm clock to wake you up at your fixed time in the morning.
An alarm clock may seem like a disturbance at first but later on, it helps establish your sleep routine and once that is established, you find yourself being happier and more productive with your time. If you already have an established sleep routine, you can get anxious during the day if you distort the order of your routine activities because you did not wake up on time. An alarm clock helps you to prevent that.
Finally, an alarm clock on your nightstand is a must-have if you especially find it hard to wake up without a loud reminder. There is a variety of alarm clocks to choose from, you can buy one with light or voice cues that indicate what it is ringing about and this can be helpful in timing your meditation at night before you sleep or in the morning when you wake if that is part of your routine activities.
Conclusion
A nightstand may seem like a small purpose with just a few functions, if at all, but even more than just being that, a nightstand can help your sleep routine in ways you have seen in this post. With the right accessories, you can make your nightstand a one-stop harbor for everything you need to have a good sleep routine.
You should also consider adding a nightstand to your bedroom if you do not already have one because it can help save space and declutter your room. It may be challenging to find the right nightstand that suits you but where there is the desire, there will be a way out.
