We’ve all heard the story of the Princess and the Pea, right? A wayfaring stranger shows up at a castle in the middle of the night and claims to be a lost princess. The queen, convinced that the stranger is out to snare her handsome son, comes up with a plan to prove she truly is a princess. She must sleep on twenty mattresses with a pea placed under the bottom mattress. If the pea disrupts her sleep, then we know she is a true princess. Well, as the story goes, she slept horribly, married the prince and lived happily ever after sleeping on a Beautyrest* with no peas.
As most of you, I found the story ridiculous and thought long and hard about it as a girl. First of all, how could anyone feel a pea under twenty mattresses? Would I? Secondly, how in the world did they stack all those mattresses and how did she climb on top? And finally, most importantly, why wouldn’t she run screaming for the door when the wackos show her where she is to sleep, and her precariously stacked bed requires a ladder to get in and out of?
Well, I’m here to tell you: it’s all true! And apparently, I am a Princess. Now, I’m not talking about stacked mattresses and peas here, but about the smallest thing disrupting my sleep – The evil blue eye on the cable box.
I sleep with an eye mask, and yet the blue light pierces through the dark and creeps under the mask waking me up multiple times per night. I know this is the case because when the armoire doors are closed, shutting away the evil beast with one blue eye, I sleep soundly. When the doors are open, I sleep fitfully. I’m pretty sure my husband thinks I’m crazy. Don’t underestimate the sensitivity of a true princess.
I am not alone in this. Many experts agree that light, particularly blue light from electronics, is extremely disruptive to our sleep. Take this study from Harvard for example. The study primarily focus on screens and lightbulbs, (clearly they are unaware of the evil eye in my armoire) but I’ve seen studies claiming that even the signal an electronic devise receives can disrupt sleep. Therefore, having any sort of web or cable device in your room continually causes sleep deprivation. This is especially important in thinking about our children and their sleep habits. Teenagers are especially prone to depression and anxiety when not sleeping well.
Now that my Princess status has been verified, there are things I can do to insure proper beauty sleep. First and foremost, I will close the armoire doors without fail; I will try to avoid staring at my cellphone screen too close to bedtime; and I will remove our wireless router from the bedroom.
My Prince bringing me tea and fluffing my pillows wouldn’t hurt either. 😉
*This post was not sponsored by Beautyrest
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