Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Are You Tired of Feeling Tired? 3 Ways to get a BETTER Sleep | Clutterbug Podcast # 200

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Are you tired all the time? Do you feel like you're not getting enough sleep?  In today's podcast, I talk about how getting a good night's rest can make a huge difference in your day-to-day life, including the state of your home. I share three simple and effective tips to help you sleep better and wake up feeling refreshed. Stop feeling exhausted, and start getting the restful sleep you deserve!   You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's talk about sleep patterns. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you tired all the time? And how can we get a better night sleep so we feel motivated and like energized to tackle the day? Hey, Clutterbugs. Welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about sleep. And I've never talked about this before. And I know you're like, Cass, you are supposed to be somebody I listen to to to talk about. cleaning my house and get motivation to declutter and to organize and learn about my organizing style. Why the heck are you talking about sleep? But I think when we're trying to improve our life, no matter what area of our life we want to improve, we kind of have to fix the things that might be causing the problem in the first place. You know what I mean? And last week's podcast, we talked about the incredible power of getting your house under control and how that affects every other aspect of your life because when a good day, when you have a start out with a

good day, it gets better and making positive changes, trickles to every other area. We, this, the same thing goes for a good night sleep. And we cannot have the energy to make these changes in our life when we're exhausted, when our tank is depleted. If we don't get a good night sleep or we consistently just get a little bit less sleep than our body actually needs, we feel very unmotivated and have just no energy to do the things that we need to do. So this is critical that we learn about this. And for me, I'm getting older. I now need glasses. Things are starting to go kaputskis. And I noticed when I was younger, I could have a couple of nights where maybe I only got five hours sleep or a six hour sleep and I'd be tired but I'd be okay. Now even when I'm

getting maybe eight hours sleep, I don't feel like it's enough and my recovery time isn't doesn't turn around as much. So I was doing some research like why am I so freaking tired? Why do I, why am I not getting as good of a night sleep as I used to? And there's actually science behind this. So whether it doesn't matter what age you are, I do want to talk about how to get more sleep, but also how aging affects our sleep and how stress affects our sleep and how medications we're taking affects our sleep so that we can just have all the knowledge. So tonight, after you listen to this podcast, tonight, you're going to have the best sleep of your life, which means tomorrow you're going to feel amaze balls.

Yes. Are you ready for this? While you're listening, I hope you do something productive in your home. Don't just sit and listen. Maybe fold laundry or do the dishes or vacuum a little bit, mop, whatever it is that you want to do so that you're proud of yourself at the end of this podcast because it's going to be sweet and short and to the point. So let's jump right in. Let's talk about sleep and our internal clock. So some part of our brain called, the, I'm reading this, the hippothalmus, man, thank God, I'm not a doctor, is made up of like 20,000 cells that form something called the suprachasmic nucleus. I am butchering this. We're going to call it the C-E-N. Basically, this controls like the 24-hour cycles called our circadian rhythms, and it influences is when we get hungry, when we release certain hormones, when we feel tired, when we feel alert. So there's part of our brain that is influencing all of these rhythms. And as we get older, these rhythms, this part of our brain, the S-E-N, starts to not function as well, just like my eyes. I now need reading glasses. What's happening? A part of our brain actually doesn't work quite as

well either. So it's directly affecting when we feel tired, when we feel alert. That's why a lot of older people go to bed a little bit earlier. We feel tired earlier. But basically, this part of your brain receives information from light, a lot of light. So if we're not going outside as often, we're not having as much exposure to daylight, that affects it. But also the hormones that our body naturally releases like melatonin and cortisol, all of those things are disrupted as we get older too. So our body just does not secrete as much melatonin. And this starts around the age of 35. Our body stops secreting as much melatonin. And we usually have higher cortisol levels. So more stress hormones in our bodies as we're older, both of these things make it harder to fall asleep.

The other thing that happens as we get a little bit older is we often wake up more, we have like less of a deep sleep. And maybe that has also something to do with the melatonin or the different hormones that are in our body or the fact that we have to get up to pee a lot. I don't know what it is. But our nighttime sleep is also getting interrupted. And if you have young kids at home, you know what it's like. You could be in your bed for maybe 10 hours. But if you're waking up every three or four, your body isn't getting that important REM sleep. You're not getting that restorative sleep that we need in order for our brain to work properly, our body to work properly. So when we're waking up in the middle of the night, that's affecting it too. So these things combined. And there's

other things we're going to talk about too that really get in the way of our sleep. You're like, well, what's the big deal? But it has a huge deal. It has a huge impact because if you're tired, it's getting in the way of you living your best life. You are grumpier. You are not as happy. You certainly are not feeling motivated. You do not just have the energy. So you tend to procrastinate and put things off. You'll look a little more haggard. You'll feel a little more haggard. and yeah, we can't deal with stress as much and it makes us sicker. Our immune system is not at its peak when we are tired. So there is a million reasons why we need to get a better night's sleep.

And some of the things that interfere with our sleep is like stress and worry. So if we have a lot of things on our mind, especially the holiday season, we're like laying in bed, thinking about all the Christmas gifts and all the things we have to do and blah, that stresses. And remember, as we get older, have more cortisol, so we're feeling more stressed anyways. And if our house is a disaster, and we have all these to-do-liss, we're also laying in bed thinking about that. It's crazy cycle. And then we don't get enough sleep. And then we wake up and we feel even more stressed. And that's crazy pants. Hormonal changes. So I am perimenopausal, my doctor calls that.

I don't know how that's different from regular metapause. But yeah, not only do I I have hot flashes at night quite often, but I just, my hormones are all bongs. Technology. This is one of the leading reasons why more people than ever are not getting as much sleep or are not getting a really restful sleep or having a hard time falling asleep because science has shown that the effects from the light that comes off of our phone, whether it's a television screen, a phone screen, your iPad, your laptop, that blue light is actually disrupting that that S-E-N part of our brain because we know that light, right, is what

triggers that circadian rhythm that makes us feel tired. And the light coming from electronics is actually signaling to our brain that it's morning. I did not know this. I found this out recently, and I've been doing a lot of research into it, and it is 100% true. So that's why after we're like scrolling our phone, we can fall asleep if we're really, really exhausted. But if we go right from looking at a screen into our bed and our body isn't like, oh, exhausted, it's very hard for us to fall asleep because our brain thinks it's not time to go to sleep. Like we are disrupting our rhythm. Our diet choices. So what we're, we eat before bed. If it's taking a lot to digest, it can be really hard for us to have that

REM brain sleep because a lot of our energy is going towards our digestive system to digest the crap that we ate. Lack of exercise. We're not exhausted. Medication. I'm reading all these things. Overstimulation before bed. Light, noise, uncomfortable sleeping environment. Man, I'm so much. I get so sore now. that I'm in my mid-40s. Like I feel more sore than I ever did even five years ago, my hips, my neck, my back and everything. So I really needed to upgrade my sleeping environment, my pillows and my mattress. Like that did not.

I could sleep on the floor in my 20s and be fine. You know, now I can't even get up off the floor without my hips creaking. So we have to, we can't just ignore the aging and we can't just ignore all these other things that could be contributing to poor sleep because we don't recover like we did before. And even if you're listening to this and you're a teen or you're in your 20s, we got to make sure that sleep is a priority because it affects every single aspect of our life. So here's let's talk about some solutions, what we can do to actually make real improvements to our sleep. and there are little things. We don't have to completely change everything. And a lot of these you know, and a lot of these I know. And there's a difference between knowing and doing. There is a big difference between knowing and doing. So here's what I want. It's Monday. Maybe you're listening to this after a Monday. But those of you who are listening to this Monday, we are going to make a commitment to each other that let's try this for one week. Let's try this till the weekend. Let's try some of these

things, not all of them, but some of these things and see if it really makes a difference. Let's let's see if we feel more energized, if we feel happier, if we feel more motivated and more productive and like look less haggard. I'm hoping it has an effect on the facial thing. I want all the benefits of a good night's sleep, but we got to do the work. And we know when it's like, but that seems, but this stuff isn't even hard. It's not like we got to scrub any. We just have to do these little things. So let's make commitment to give these small shifts a try and really only one of them sucks.

You want to guess what it is? You'll find out in a second. Okay. So the number one solution that all the experts say is to create a nighttime routine. So the same thing that we do all the time, we probably have a nighttime routine, but it might not be a healthy one. Basically, a better nighttime routine means inducing relaxation like 30 minutes before we're going to go to bed. So giving ourselves 30 minutes before the time that we usually go to bed, that's to relax. And here's the hard part with a tech timeout.

So not being on our electronic devices 30 minutes before bed. Oh, God, this sounds horrible. No TV. No laptop. No, just one last tick, Chuck scroll. Yeah. This is what I have to give this. You and I, let's do this for a week. Let's honestly give this a try. So what can we do instead? We can read. We can journal. I know. But listen, it's for our health. Okay. Sometimes we eat salads too. We could knit or color. We could do a Sudoku puzzle. We could do

a crossword, we can do, we can, I don't know, just sit and listen to music. All, you're like, this sounds boring. That's the point. That's the point for 30 minutes before the time we want to go to bed. Not when we need to go to bed. It's like, ooh, I got to go to sleep at 10 because I got to get up at 6 or whatever and I need that. No, at 9.30 then, we start this new routine. So that's what we're going to try this week, and that is the tech timeout and doing something that you enjoy instead. And for me, like, I have a bath every single night, but then when I get out of the bath, I don't immediately go to bed. I'm like, this is my relaxation time and I reach for my phone or I reach to watch something to tell myself to wind down. But I know because they've done

thousands of studies that show that the light coming and the stimulation coming from electronics does the opposite of making you feel relaxed. So it's only in our head that we're telling ourselves that this is relaxing. The truth is this isn't relaxing. It's stimulating us. So we need to knock that out. The other thing we need to be mindful about as part of our bedtime routine is our snacking. I eat before, I need to eat before bed because, I can't fall asleep on an empty stomach. But if I eat something that's like chips, I love chips, or even popcorn for me, if I eat something that is bigger or takes my body longer to digest, I'm going to have a hard time falling asleep. So something light would be like a bowl of oatmeal or

even cereal, a banana, have a cup of tea, maybe some toast, something that is lighter. You're not having like a big, you're on like chocolate bars and stuff that can stimulate your digestive track and then take energy away from the brain. So even if you do fall asleep, you're not getting like, you know, the good, the good REM sleep. A lot of people do like stretching before bed, which is supposed to be relaxing. I mean, that can be part of your 30 minutes. Put on some like relaxing music. And we do like Tai Chi or yoga or something.

Man, this is a whole new thing for me. I don't know. But it does sound cool. I think my husband would make fun of me. But whatever you got to do. And here's the other thing that's very, very, very important. Okay. So we talked about your brain, your S-E-N, the rhythm thing that's stimulated by light.

So the same reason we don't want to look at electronic devices that have that blue light that really simulate morning and daytime. We want to dim the lights to signal to our brain that we're getting sleepy. And we want to like reduce noise levels. Again, that 30 minutes before. So soft music. soft noises. If you have blackout blinds, use them. Dim the lights or shut the lights off. Light a candle. We're giving ourselves that sleep ambiance because it's a cue to our brain to relax and calm down. While I'm saying these things, do you actually do these things?

Have you ever? Right. It's important. Okay. So the second solution, to have it. So those are like the routine based things. The second thing that we can do that can help us get a better night's sleep is create a better sleep environment. And this can be, I feel like there's some things on here that might be a little pricey, but there's other things that cost us nothing that we can do. Keep it dark. We talked about that. So blackout curtains, blackout blinds, how do we reduce light at this time? Can we get a little night light so we don't stub our toe and shut off all the other lights. The other thing that's very helpful in a sleep environment is sound. I know for myself, I have a little fan that doesn't even really blow. I got it from Amazon. It was so cheap, but it's loud. It's like

this little rattley fan. And for some reason, that kind of white background noise helps drown out all the other sounds, but also just helps me fall asleep. When it's too quiet, it, my brain has trouble falling asleep. But if it's stimulating noise, I'm listening like a TV or music, I would have trouble falling asleep. But a repetitive, like white noise, fan sound or something like that is very helpful for me. So if you don't like the idea of a fan or have a fan, you can get a white noise machine. You can also play white noise on your phone. So you don't have to like make the phone leave the room. But sound. Sound is really. really important. It also helps us not wake up in the middle of the night. So having a

continual sound all night in the background helps our brain stop like waking up. It keeps us in that deep REM sleep. A pillow, a good pillow. If you, I mean, if you do nothing else, a pillow that is, that aligns with your sleep position that has like, it's either firm enough for you or soft enough for you so you don't have a bad neck. A pillow can change everything. A pillow can change everything. And know your sleeping position. Are you a back sleeper? Are you a side sleeper? Because the pillow will change depending on your sleep position. And you can do a ton of research online. I recommend doing this because you can get a good pillow for under $50 that will make you feel rested. And could you imagine if you just bought a pillow and suddenly you're motivated? If you just changed your pillow and you get

up in the morning and you're like, I'm seizing the day and cleaning my house. I have the energy to exercise. I'm feeling like I'm nice to everyone because I'm not a grumpy cow because I had a good night's sleep. Like can a pillow do this? Apparently yes. Seriously. So do a little research about your sleep position, how you sleep and what type of pillow will be best for you and make the investment. The other thing that is, it's definitely investment, but your mattress, they can be so pricey. Mattresses can be so, so expensive. But is your mattress like more than 10 years old? It might be time for an upgrade. And if you wake up every morning and you're really sore, it might be time for a mattress upgrade. You are worth it. You spend almost, almost half of your time.

in bed, right? Like maybe, maybe that's a lot, maybe that, but a lot, a lot of your life, a lot, a huge portion of your life is spent laying in bed. It's worth it to have a mattress that helps you get a better night's sleep because a better night sleep affects your health, your physical health, your mental health, your happiness, your energy levels. And so right now, if you can't afford a new mattress, can you get a mattress topper? Can you get something to ensure that you are having a good night sleep, especially as we age? This is so insanely important. And the other thing that we can do to improve our sleep environment is our temperature. Why do we sleep better and cool, we do. And you know what the ideal temperature is? This is going to blow your mind,

okay? The ideal sleeping temperature in a bedroom for the best night's sleep that keeps you asleep that helps your brain. And listen, between 60 and 67 Fahrenheit, that's cold. 60 to 67 Fahrenheit. My husband likes to sleep with it like 72, which maybe that's part of the problem lately. He's like, I like to just sleep in my underpants. And I'm having like hot flashes and it's 72 up in there. And I'm so, I'm just not, I'm not comfortable.

I'm not getting a good night's sleep. And you may be the same. Yeah. The ideal temperature for good night sleep, they've done bazillion studies on this. The experts know is between 60 and 70, which is like a fridge. That's cold. Can you set your temperature in your house to automatically maybe an hour after you've gone to sleep to turn it down and to turn the heat back on maybe three hours before you wake up?

Can you schedule your thermostat to shut the furnace off and turn it back on so you don't even really notice except you're sleeping? I don't know. I'm throwing out. I'm just throwing out ideas here in this podcast to help you and to help me wake up and feel more refreshed. Before I get into the final thing, I have to take a second to thank today's podcast sponsor. Today's podcast is brought to you by ORA frames. ORA is a digital picture frame that I got a few years ago that honestly is one of my most favorite things in my home and absolutely the favorite gift I've ever given. And I give them to my grandparents, my mom, my mother-in-law, my stepmom, everyone has got one

because they're so incredible. Not only is it a beautiful frame, but you can upload photos directly to this frame from your phone or from a computer from anywhere in the world, which means friends and family from all over the place can also upload photos directly to someone's frame from all over the world. So I've given this to all my family members and all the cousins, all the aunts and uncles also add photos to the frames. One of the greatest things I've ever purchased. It would make a great gift for a person on your Christmas list and right now you can get a great deal. Go to auraframes.com and use the promo code clutterbug. That's a ura frames.com with the promo code clutterbug. Check out these

frames. They make a beautiful gift. You should even get one for yourself too. So the final thing that we can do to improve and get a better night's sleep is really take a look at underlying reasons of why we're not sleeping as well. So it's one thing to say, yeah, we're getting older, or, you know, it's the device's fault or whatever it is. But a lot of the time, there is another reason why we're feeling more tired and we're not getting as good of a sleep as we used to or that we should and could be getting. And I don't want you to just discount this. If you are feeling more tired than normal, more exhausted,

and you're not being able to fall asleep as well, or even if you are falling asleep, you're like, I'm sleeping more than ever, but I wake up and I don't feel rested. There may be something else going on. And it is worth talking to your doctor about and requesting some tests, or really looking into alternative reasons of why you're not getting the sleep that you should.

So hormonal shifts as we go through metapause as women or whatever it is. Sometimes you have hormonal shifts and you're young. Getting your hormones checked, getting a baseline of your estrogen, progester, testosterone. You can request this test from your doctor and just really see if there's an imbalance there because oftentimes there's things that you can do to get that balanced, right? I know for my daughter, we, we just put her on a really low, um, level birth control and it drastically improved her mood and her sleep. So she had something like pre menstrual something that we had no idea. We're like, everybody gets cranky before their period starts. No, she had like a real medical condition when

her hormone levels dropped too drastic and too fast. And so a small thing that we could do that drastically improved the quality of her life, thyroid imbalances. So I have Hashimoto's. I have a thyroid condition that I didn't know about and was undiagnosed for a long time. Everyone kept saying, yeah, you're tired because you just had a baby or you're tired because you're getting older. Yeah, you're feeling all these.

Well, it turned out this whole time my thyroid wasn't working. Right? So look into that medication side effects. Have you started taking a medication that's a lot of medication interrupts your sleep? Has there been a new medication? And of course, like your stress level. Are you more stressed than normal? Is there something that's really bothering you right now?

Like we can't, we should have a night better routine. We definitely can improve our sleep environment. We can do these little things to improve our sleep, but we also need to rule out underlying causes. And I think the best thing is doing all three of these things. Treat yourself to a new pillow. Definitely this week, you and I, we are setting an alarm a half an hour before we should go to bed and putting down the electronics and dimming the lights and engaging in sleepy time, boring activities

to see if this makes a difference. Because why, why, why should we care? Why does it matter? There's a lot of things in your life that can be improved by getting more sleep because there's a lot of things that a sleep deprivation can do that have crazy negative effects like concentration. You have trouble focusing in concentration. People who are sleep deprived if they have ADHD, it's drastically worse. But it also, even if they don't have ADHD, it can mimic ADHD because we have a hard time focusing and we're very easily distracted. We get

bored very easily. We're also a lot grumpier. So, we have less patience. We're moody because we're freaking tired. We're like grumpy cat over here. Like go take a nap. So it affects our relationships. We have, we're physically exhausted. So our body is tired. So we have, you know, we just don't feel like getting up and moving. We have trouble getting the mojo to get going. And we don't want to do stuff. We're totally lacking motivation because we're mentally exhausted too. We're not only physically exhausted, but we're mentally exhausted. We start making a lot of mistakes, trip more often, spill more often, forget things more often, just all the things. And I think one of the biggest things that happens when we don't get

enough sleep is we get sick. Our immune system does not work properly when we're tired. I don't know why. something with our white blood cells don't work as well. So we get more colds. We are, if we have cuts or anything, they don't heal as proper. We don't heal as fast. Our cells don't, we look older. We're not rejuvenating as fast. You got, you know, you know when someone looks tired, they got big bags. They look like garbage. They got bags under their eyes. Their skin looks drier. We're puffier. You look horrible when you don't. get a good night's sleep. And that's again, because your immune system isn't working at its, that's why we're puffy. That's why we have the bags. That's why our skin looks dull and dry,

because our immune system isn't working. We make more mistakes. It's hard to be as creative. We, we just like, when we do sit, it's hard to get going again. So we sit on the couch just to take a break for a second and we're not getting back up again. So yeah, everything around us is harder. And imagine if we only had to do a few little things 30 minutes before bed and we could change all of that. Because that's what the experts are saying. That's how important it is. What if we could change everything? What if we could have the energy to clean our house and get up and want to do the dishes and not be exhausted, not snap at our spouse or our children and actually want to go out after dinner maybe and do, and not just like, ooh, I'm so exhausted. I just want to stay in my PJs and

stay home. What if we have zest again? What if we have that zest for life again? And on the weekends, we want to get up and go out and do something or garden or do something in our home. What if we feel that pep in our step again? And what if the reason we don't feel it now is just because we're not doing these little things that we can do a half an hour before bed, small things that are no work. And the only way to really know is to try. Why not try? We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So I hope you're feeling inspired this week. We are not going to go on our devices 30 minutes before bed. We are making a commitment to each other, friends. We're going to do. the lights. We're going to, we're going to maybe buy new pillows. I just bought a new pillow,

life changing. We're going to look at all these incredible ways that we can have a better nighttime routine, a better sleep environment, and make a doctor's appointment so that you can rule out any underlying medical conditions. If you do these three things, I promise you, you will get a better night's sleep. And when you get a better night's sleep, your entire life will be better too. Thank you guys so much. Love spending time with you and I'll see you guys next time.