What is Sleep Hygiene and why is it important?

Rest and good quality sleep are crucial for both your physical and mental wellbeing. You can’t expect your body or mind to perform at their best if you don’t allow the rest and recovery they both need. A great way to encourage better sleep, is to practice sleep hygiene. 

Now, I’ll admit, when I first heard the term ‘sleep hygiene’ I just assumed it meant being clean before going to bed, and changing the bedding on a regular basis. In actual fact it is defined as certain behaviours and habbits you can include into your evening routine in the lead up to you catching those all-important Z’s.

Maintain a schedule By going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time, you train your body to adopt the routine, commonly referred to as your body clock. I know I’m not the only one who enjoys a long lay in on the weekend, but this could actually be detrimental to your overall sleeping pattern. Your timing should ideally only fluctuate by about half an hour either side.

This is a bit of a struggle for me, as whilst I can maintain set times during the week it all goes to pot on the weekend. I end up going out, staying up until the early hours and then inevitably sleep until the afternoon. I would say however, one night within the week is probably alright to deviate from the schedule, as I maintain it reasonably well the rest of the week.

Don’t stay in bed

A terrible habit for many of us is to lay awake in bed when we can’t sleep. I myself do it, when I’ve got a million things flooding through my brain when I’m trying to sleep I just lay there in the dark. Even worse, I’ll be counting in my head how many hours until I my alarm goes off for the morning.
If you’ve been lying awake with an overactive brain for over 30 minutes, rather than continue to fight a losing battle, the best thing to do is get out of bed. Don’t turn the lights on or grab your phone, the light and the stimulation will just wake you up even more, instead you should go and sit somewhere quiet and let your mind clear until you start to get sleepy. I’ll sometimes pop down to the kitchen, drink some water and then go back to bed.

Reduce light A great way of letting your body know it’s time to sleep, is to give it physical cues to pick up on. By reducing light an hour or so before you actually want to go to bed, you help encourage your body to start the process of shutting down. We have multiple lights in our living room, so I’ll gradually turn them off until we are down to one just before its time to go to sleep. When it does come time to go to sleep, your room should be as dark as possible.

Your bed is for sleep Well, some of the time….

But seriously, as great as it is to read before bed to unwind, you should avoid doing it in bed if you can. The more you associate being in bed with ‘awake’ things the less you’ll associate it with actual sleep. The same goes for phones, computers and watching TV. If you can, keep your bed reserved exclusively for sleeping and sex.

Exercise As well as being good for you physically, exercise will help promote good quality and continuous sleep. That and it helps your body to release endorphins, so will help you with your mood and mental wellbeing as well as your sleep. Although these endorphins may hinder sleep immediately after exercise, so ensure there is a gap to let your body settle again.

Temperature

For the best sleep, the temperature of your room should be slightly cooler. If you can crack open a window to allow a little fresh air in, then even better. That doesn’t mean you should be cold though, and ideally your hands and feet should be warm – so when its cold feel free to break out those fluffy bed socks!

There are many different ways you can promote self-care, so why not give some of the above a try, and see how you feel. I’s just a few small changes to your routine that could leave you feeling better both mentally and physically.

The Plant Trio - Mystery Giveaway!

As some of you may (or may not) know, I co-run a second Instagram account alongside of Em’s World Blog, and that account is ‘The Plant Trio’. The Plant Trio, as you may have guessed is run by three of us, myself and my two close friends Katie and Chloe, and is focused around our ever growing obsession for house plants.

 

(Image provided by Katie in connection with the giveaway)

You’ll find a mix of plant related content over there from regular plants you can grab while out grocery shopping, to rarer, more expensive or hard to come by plants, different types of pests and how to get rid of them, terrariums, substrate mixes and propagation methods. Basically anything that involved a plant, even vaguely is likely to make its way

 

The Plant Trio was started as something the three of us could do together, while apart, that also catered to a hobby we all shared and I have to say, I’m really glad we did it and hope the other two are enjoying it as much as I am!

 

So to celebrate, we will be running a mystery giveaway when we hit 250 followers! I’ve tried to answer any questions that anyone may have below, but if I’ve missed anything, or you have further questions please feel free to comment or drop a message to our Instagram.

 

 

So, what will the prizes be? Well, the prizes will be a small selection of cuttings from within our own personal collections. We will be starting the rooting process ahead of time to try and get some roots established before the cuttings are sent, however, due to the nature of cuttings there is a chance that some won’t be rooted yet – or will have minimal amount of roots.

 

Can you root the cuttings for me? We can hang onto the cuttings a little longer to allow them more time to root prior to sending, and will do so at the request of the winner.

 

How will the cuttings be sent? Due to the plants being a mix of rooted and unrooted cuttings, we will be sending each cutting in moss. They will be sent via Royal Mail, using next day delivery on a Monday or Tuesday to ensure minimal time in transit. We will package the plants as securely as possible, but unfortunately cannot control or be responsible for transit damage or delays.

 

What if my cutting dies? Whilst we will make sure each cutting is as healthy as possible prior to sending, the responsibility for continuing the care of the cuttings will fall to the winner. If you do not know how to care for the cuttings, let us know and we will help in any way we can.

 

Who can enter? Anyone who lives in the UK, and follows the instructions that will be posted on our Instagram can enter!

 

How will the winner be contacted? The winner will be announced via our stories which will be saved to our ‘giveaway’ highlight, and they will be sent a message from our Instagram page. We will not use any other page or account to contact the winner, nor will we ask you for any money or bank details. If we cannot get hold of the winner, a new winner will be selected – the original winner will have a week to respond.

 

How do I enter? A few days after we hit our 250 goal there will be a giveaway post. To enter, simply head on over to our giveaway post, like and save our post and tag a plant loving friend. You can tag as many as you like, and each comment with a tag counts as one entry. You can earn yourself an additional entry by sharing our post and tagging us in your stories!

 

Will there be giveaways in the future? Yes! We will most certainly be hosting more giveaways. We are even prepping to include some more special cuttings in future giveaways, so stay tuned!

 

We’ll be launching the giveaway shortly after we hit 250 followers, so if you want to be involved make sure you are following us!  

February Goals - 2021

After what felt like an eternity January is finally over! January is a month that typically drags on a bit anyway, but this time thanks to UK lockdown it felt so much longer, and kind of like groundhog day. I’ve felt quite run down for a lot of last month so I’m quite glad to have a long weekend booked for Mike’s birthday later this month – even though we can’t actually do anything!

 

As usual let’s have a look at how I did with last month’s goals and see how I got on.

 

Wedding cancelations

It feels a little bitter-sweet to be ticking this one off, but it’s done. Everything we had booked for our wedding in the USA is now cancelled and we’re finally got all of our refunds back. Actually, most of the cancelations and refunds were done pretty quickly, with the only problems being with the photographers who were being pretty awkward about sending us our refund, despite it being in their terms and conditions.  

 

Decorate the house

We’ve had a few bits arrive and we’re planning to move the house around, but I haven’t really got much done with this…. Let’s just pen this one down as in progress for now!

 

Buy a wish list plant

I did this! In fact, I went over and above with this one. I added two wish list plants to my collection, a Variegated Syngonium, as well as an Anthurium Silver Blush. The latter of the two I didn’t think I’d be able to get hold of for some time, as they seem to be rarely sold. I even managed to get hold of two, and the other is a gift for my friend for her birthday, as she is also a collector of plants, and this is one that was also on her wish list.

 

Get back into a running routine

I’ve been a few times, but I don’t think I’d go so far as to say I’m in a routine. Between it being very wet and muddy, and the weather being cold I haven’t gone very much. I have instead been doing Yoga in my living room a few times a week though, so I guess it’s good that I’ve managed to do something. As I mentioned, I’ve been feeling quite run down, so going for a 5k run in the cold has been pretty low on my agenda.

 

Start getting up earlier

This lasted for about a week and I felt great for it, then it tapered off again, so it is certainly something to be added back to my February goals.

 

 

Now that we’ve gone over last month, here are my goals for February!

 

 

Get on track with the blog

After doing Blogmas through December, I produced far less content in the month of January. I previously had a fairly good schedule of weekly posting, which worked quite well for me and I’d like to get back to that if I can.

 

Change my hair colour

For this one I will accept starting the process as a ‘pass’ because it’s likely to take a little time to get from my current colour to my desired one. There’s every chance I won’t be able to get to the colour I have in my head, so we’ll have to see. Getting rid of the red from my hair is the first hurdle.

 

Be better with my skincare routine

I’m wavering a bit when it comes to my skin care, and being a bit more lax than I should. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not skipping it for days on end, but I used to have a great morning and evening routine that I stuck to religiously and want to get back closer to that.

 

Pick out paint and wallpaper

We’re having a little shuffle around in our house, and the beauty room is moving! I have an image in my head of what kind of colour scheme I want, but I need to peg something down and buy the supplies. This will also become the ‘jungle room’ and be where I store my rarer plants as well as those that need more specific care.

 

Assemble the ‘greenhouse’

Speaking of house plants, I’ve brought a large glass cabinet from IKEA that I will be converting into an indoor green house for the more tropical plants. It arrived recently, and it now needs to be put together, and then I’ll need to work out how to install the heat mats, grow lamps and fans.

 

 

That’s sums up my goals for this month. Again, there aren’t many, but a lot of them are things I’ll need to keep up over the course of the month. I also have the feeling that last one will take me some time… we’ll see.

 

Do you have any goals for February?