Ten Tips For Better Sleep

We all could probably benefit from a full night’s rest.  Getting enough sleep not only helps you feel more alert and accomplish more each day, it also helps you stay healthy, happy, and can even help you lose weight.  If you find you’re tossing and turning instead of sleeping at night, here are ten tips to help you get some rest.

1. Set a sleep schedule. For the best quality sleep, it is recommended that you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.  This not only helps you fall asleep faster, you’ll also be getting better amounts of the right kind of sleep, so you’ll wake up feeling even more rested.
2. Avoid stimulants. Most of us will be kept up for a while if we drink a cup of coffee or soda right before bed, but even if you drink it in the morning, you could still be feeling the effects.  It may be hard in the beginning, but if you’re getting enough sleep, you don’t really need that pick-me-up in the morning.
3. Try natural remedies. Lavender is a great natural way to soothe yourself to sleep.  You can put some fresh lavender in your pillow, or even buy a pillow or pillowcase woven from it.  The gentle scent of the fabric will lull you to sleep for many years.  If you’re looking for something a bit stronger, Valerian root is commonly used to help people sleep.
4. Keep the spine curved. If you’re looking for a good night’s sleep, try curling up into the fetal position on your side with a pillow between your legs.  This spinal position helps support your body perfectly and the pillow helps keep you from rolling to your stomach.
5. Keep your bedroom just for sleeping. If your bedroom is also where you watch TV, read, play games and do other activities, your brain will associate it with those activities and not with sleeping.  Your bedroom should not have any distracting objects and should only be used for sleep.  That way your body knows that when you go to bed, it’s time to rest.
6. Go to the gym. Regular exercise will not only make you happier and healthier, it will also help you sleep better.  If you exercise, you tire your body out more and make it more prepared for rest.  Plus, exercise will help you lose weight which can reduce snoring and disorders like sleep apnea.
7. Avoid alcohol. While alcohol is a depressant, it can disrupt your natural sleep cycle.  Plus, many people have a bounce back effect and find themselves waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep.
8. Relax. Many of us try to go straight from our daily lives to bed and our bodies just can’t switch off.  Try adding some unwinding before you go to bed.  Listen to music or do something else that calms you.  Many people benefit from specific relaxation techniques like yoga or meditation.
9. Drink a glass of warm milk. Milk, like many high protein foods, contains a chemical that makes you sleepy.  It also has calcium that keeps you healthy and makes your body more reactive to the chemicals, letting you fall asleep faster.
10. See a doctor. If you’ve tried just about everything and still can’t rest, see your doctor.  Not only can they give you medication and tips to help you sleep, they can also make sure your sleeping issues are not a symptom of a bigger problem.

5 Low Cost Tips to Green Lifestyle

Going green has become a popular trend that looks like it’s here to stay.  Even if you can’t build a new home that is energy efficient or remodel your existing home to make it greener, there are still things you can do at home to help the environment.

1. First, consider replacing your old incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.  These bulbs use up to 80 percent less energy than the older style bulbs.  As an added bonus, they last longer so you won’t have to change then as often.
2. Second, you can attach aerators to your faucets.  These little devices attach to the faucet where the water comes out, and mix air into the flow. You’ll use less water, but the water pressure will remain nearly the same as before.  There are similar devices available to attach to your shower heads, which will reduce the total amount of water you use while showering.
3. Third, replace your old thermostat with a programmable one.  This will allow you to fine tune your heating and cooling cycles to the times you’re at home and actively using your living areas.  The energy savings can really add up when you stop keeping the house warm or cool for the entire 8 to 10 hours that you spend at work.  You can set the thermostat to turn off as you leave for work, and set it to automatically turn on about a half hour before you return home. Your house will be comfortable while you’re at home, but you won’t be wasting energy and money while you’re away.
4. Fourth, install a water filter on your kitchen faucet instead of buying bottled water.  Most municipal water systems in the United States provide clean, healthy drinking water, so a filter is usually not necessary.  But major beverage manufacturers have spent millions of dollars on marketing campaigns to get us to think that bottled water is cleaner and safer than plain tap water. If you just can’t bring yourself to start drinking water from the tap, you can at least buy and install a filter.  Then you can stop adding plastic water bottles to your local landfill.
5. Fifth, start using cloth tote bags for your grocery shopping.  Plastic grocery bags are not biodegradable, and are another of the many disposable items that are clogging up local landfills.  If you don’t want to start a collection of cloth grocery tote bags, you can at least reuse the plastic grocery bags.  Many communities also have recycling receptacles for plastic grocery bags.  So when you have accumulated more than you can use, instead of throwing them away, you can recycle them.

These are just a few ways you can help clean up the environment.  They’re fairly easy to implement.  They’ll help you get in the habit of looking for ways to be even more eco-friendly.

3 Ways Your Computer Can Help Turn Your Home Office Green

These days everyone is looking for more ways to clean up the environment.  If you have a home office, here are some ideas to help you use your desktop and laptop computers to make your lifestyle greener.

Consider using digital storage instead of printing everything out. You can scan important legal documents and store them on your hard drive instead of keeping multiple hard copies in storage.  Even if you work in an industry that requires by law that you keep records for a number of years, you can usually find ways to at least reduce the amount of printouts you do on a regular basis.  And at this point, many state and federal laws have been amended to allow digital storage of files that need to be maintained for several years.

There are now many online vendors to choose from who can provide digitally secure storage for your computer’s files.  The cost of online storage is usually a lot less than renting an off-site storage unit to fill with boxes and boxes of paper.  If you can use digital storage, you can save money, and you can also save a lot of trees.

If you use a fax system regularly, you can save money by switching to an online fax service. You won’t have to waste paper and printer ink on spam faxes or faxes that are incomplete…just delete them from your hard drive.  You also won’t miss out on important faxes because of an empty ink cartridge.  Not only will you save on paper and printer ink, but you‘ll have an automatic digital copy on your hard drive of every fax you send or receive.  And you’ll never have to buy a new fax machine again.  Just do an internet search for online fax services and choose the one with a plan that fits your needs.

Another way to reduce using paper is to switch to online banking and billing.  Most  banks and utility companies today have options for paperless billing.  You can receive and pay all of your bills online.  In fact, most other services that bill you on a regular basis now have the option for online billing.  Cable companies, credit card companies and phone companies all have the resources to eliminate paper bills and make all of your transactions online.  By handling all of your bills online, you can save reams of paper and have copies of your transactions automatically stored on your hard drive.

It’s easy to see that the more you use your computer, the greener your office will be.  Start with these small steps.  Then if you want to get really serious about having a green home office, you can always add solar panels to power your computers.

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