Sleep Setup
The sage Dynomight writes that advice (usually) doesn't work, but that "there’s a specific category of advice ... that people are particularly interested in and particularly likely to follow: Advice about ways to spend money."
On that note, here is my sleep-setup and the ways you can spend money to recreate it.
I sleep on the floor on a Futon Bed From Japan. As best I can tell it's legitimately one of those Small Family Business-es of legend. The shikibuton are stupidly comfortable and cost $610 including shipping for a Queen Size, which is not-little but compares favorably with the online mattress brands competing for my attention.
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The shikibuton goes on top of this MAXYOYO foam "tatami mat" from Amazon: it has no meaningful relation to a tatami mat, but putting that aside it's the most comfortable floor surface I've ever encountered – sometimes I just sleep on it directly.
Instead of a pillow, I use a rectangular buckwheat bolster from Dharma Crafts.
DharmaCrafts
The running theme through these is that – once I got used to it – I find sleeping on harder surfaces (vs softer ones) is far more comfortable and feels like it's better for my body. I arrived at this belief through a combo of Katy Bowman's Nutritious Movement blog and my own meandering experiences.
Beyond the bed-setup, I very inconsistently wear sleep masks which I bought off temu, basically by picking 5 different designs that cost a couple bucks and buying a couple of each type. The reason for the quantity/rotation is that I once got acne that was probably from wearing the same mask every night, and I figured that having a bunch of masks which press on different parts of my face (and which I can wash after every use) would reduce this impact. Ultimately I found that I don't care enough about sleep masks to remember to use them anyway.
The final part of my sleep setup is taping my mouth with 3M micropore tape. I think this practice went from "very weird" to "weirdly acceptable" in the last little while, and if you haven't tried it I highly recommend it – seemingly reduces mouth-dryness and needing to pee at night, probably reduces snoring a little, probably improves your sleep overall [citation needed], and surprisingly easy and comfortable (for me, at least).
I still figure sleep-improvement is one of those things that is super worth investing in, since it takes up so much of my day and has so much effect on my energy. Changing habits is hard but buying stuff is easy, so if there's other Things you recommend for sleep please throw them in the comments.