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The Garbage Truck is Ruining my Sleep
TechBoy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've just moved into a new apartment this summer for the upcoming school year. For the past few weeks the garbage truck has been coming by at roughly 8:30AM. Every. Single. Day. Doing the whole BEEEP BEEEP thing that they do to be as annoying as possible. I'm a fairly light sleeper and it's been waking me up everyday. It's especially aggravating as I don't need to be up until 10AM or later, but often times I find myself simply unable to fall back asleep.
I have ear plugs that don't really help. My room, which I share with a heavier sleeping roommate, has a balcony with a big sliding glass door that faces the street. My bed already is already as far away from the balcony as possible, but that hardly seems to make a difference. It is too late to change apartments, and I can't really do any construction to say add sound proofing to the walls.
Are there simple, cheap, non-permanent things I can do to make my room more sound proof? All the sound basically comes through the glass balcony door. Are there better ear plugs that I could buy? Although then I worry that I won't hear my alarm. Does anyone have any other ideas, or a similar experience and solution?
Help me H/A, it's driving me insane!
I have ear plugs that don't really help. My room, which I share with a heavier sleeping roommate, has a balcony with a big sliding glass door that faces the street. My bed already is already as far away from the balcony as possible, but that hardly seems to make a difference. It is too late to change apartments, and I can't really do any construction to say add sound proofing to the walls.
Are there simple, cheap, non-permanent things I can do to make my room more sound proof? All the sound basically comes through the glass balcony door. Are there better ear plugs that I could buy? Although then I worry that I won't hear my alarm. Does anyone have any other ideas, or a similar experience and solution?
Help me H/A, it's driving me insane!
TechBoy on
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You could set up a big mattress against the sliding glass door. Or other things. Stack shit up. Add a bookcase in front of it or something if you dont plan on using the door. Replacing the glass with double pane glass would cost a few bucks but would help.
Lastly, its 8:30 for crying out loud. Hardly all that early. Go back to sleep or get up and do something productive. Most people have to wake up at 6 for work and soon you'll have to too.
And in a shocking development, some people actually work at night. I'm eagerly awaiting responses on this thread because I have a similar problem - construction and jackhammers right outside my house from 8-5 and my walls are apparently paper-thin.
Or visit the good will to see if you can buy some blankets on the cheap to stick up on the windows.
Satans..... hints.....
If your roommate doesn't mind you could also try sleeping with a fan on, or some similar device that emits a constant low-level noise. The sound from the fan will dampen any external noises, possibly bringing them below the threshold where they'll wake you up. This assumes of course that you don't have problems tuning out the fan, or else it'd just make your problem worse.
Vibrating alarm?
People in college aren't supposed to get up early? Sir, I disagree!
Though, indeed, a person should have the option to sleep when it suits them best.
As for the noise, I tend to agree with supabeast. I live right next to a freeway. At first it bothered the crap out of me, especially since in order not to boil to death, I had to have the window open. Eventually, though, I just tuned it out.
For a quicker fix, though, you could try really BAMF earplugs, the fan suggestion does, in fact, work like a charm as well. Otherwise, maybe until you _do_ get used to it, you could use the time to do something productive, like, have it ready for yourself when you get up out of bed!
Like, work on that novel you've been putting off or something. You could twist the situation and use the time as a sort of gift, time you wouldn't normally have had, in order to do some things that matter... or, if you're feeling especially esoteric/spiritual, you could take a bit of time to just be. I find that when I do this, the rest of my day tends to go, if not smoother, at least more calmly and pleasantly.
edit:
here's the website
edit edit:
keep in mind this is fibrous material made mostly from dried sugar cane and other things... if you have an allergy or sensitive skin to where you'd get really itchy from touching it then i would not recommend this. the heavy, dense object in front of your door idea would be a better one.
Expensive, I know. My friend and I both have the QC2. Absolutely amazing.
Shogun Streams Vidya
I doubt this would work very well but I would like to see you do it and take pictures.
How could you sleep with those on?
Unfortunately, I am a college student and one of them genetically late-sleeping, late-rising people to boot too. I'll save the conditioning myself to get up at 8 as an absolute last resort. (God forbid it comes to that
Thanks to all that chimed in that I will probably get used to the noise. It's really encouraging, although I have a nagging suspicion (or perhaps fear) that I will never really get used to the sound. It seems too loud, high pitched, sudden, and alarm-like for my body to ever just tune out. However, I will try running fans as white noise and see if I can convince the roommate to let me put up a blanket or carpet or wall of egg cartons ;-)
More ideas are of course welcome, thanks H/A!
condition yourself to sleeping with music playing, a lot easier to sleep through opposed to suddenly screeching BEEP BEEP BEEP
both
That was my thought. Although in many situations you'll adjust to your new living space, something like a garbage truck showing up isn't something you can just drown out. It's a sudden increase in noise, and even if it happens at the exact same time every day, it's still a loud noise amidst the otherwise-quiet morning.
You'll probably adjust a bit, to the point where you'll be able to go right back to sleep once it's gone, but that's probably about it. Dampening the noise with carpeting or some other barrier will help a fair bit, as will white noise from a fan, but there's a good chance that unless it's only barely loud enough to wake you now, it'll continue to do so.
You can try those expandable foam earplugs - they're quite comfortable to wear to bed once you get used to them, but I find they inevitably end up coming out throughout the night, so I doubt they'd be effective when you needed them.
Wish I had some decent suggestions, but it sounds like this'll be a tough thing to get rid of completely.
water spirals the wrong way out the sink
It's good for preventing sound from within the room from exiting. That's all though.
EDIT: Also for deadening a room.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
It's not for everyone, but it's worked for me in the past.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
i was actually about to suggest this
it actually used to get me in trouble because i got so used to background noise when i was sleeping that i would ignore the alarm clock as well
for a while the only thing that would wake me up was when someone was looking at me (something that started when my little brother started sneaking into my room to steal things early in the morning don't ask how)
I'd say try that
start with something calming though
I would recommend "Outbound- Bela Fleck and the Flecktones"
it's what i started with
This will sound obvious too, but try putting small heavy pillows on either side of your head (if it's comfortable). They're like giant, comfortable, sound-reducing ear muffs. Sort of luxurious too!
that way you can get used to the sound at a louder volume, and while it won't disturb your sleep schedule too much
once you can sleep with the window open, leaving it closed will be cake
until then try the music