More Than Mattresses: It's not a store!
Plus, are you ready for Daylight Saving Time?
Welcome to More Than Mattresses!
No, this isn’t an online store. It’s an outlet for a professional mattress tester who wants to, well, write about more than just mattresses — on her terms.
(I’ll be working on a proper tagline, I promise.)
A little bit about me: I’ve been writing about sleep since 2020, after a decade of serving as a generalist for a certain deal site and taking a slight detour as a hopeless skincare “influencer.” I test and review mattresses, pillows, and other sleep-adjacent products. I also research and report on the latest sleep trends and product releases, and go behind the scenes with some of the industry’s most influential figures.
These days, I’m largely working with the team at Tom’s Guide, which is where I got my start in the sleep biz. You’ll also find my work at The Strategist, HGTV, U.S. News, and Forbes Vetted…even if Google has nuked most, if not all, of my Forbes Vetted work from its results. Learn more about me and the work I do at my website.
Now on to the reason I’m kicking off this Substack after months of hemming-and-hawing…
It’s officially National Sleep Awareness Month!
Says who? Honestly, it’s difficult to find an official source for the origin of Sleep Awareness Month — if it’s even a legitimate thing at all — but March is a big month for sleep because…
World Sleep Day takes place the Friday before the spring equinox. The World Sleep Society created this event in 2008 to celebrate all things sleep and help “lessen the burden of sleep problems on society through better prevention and management of sleep disorders.” This year, World Sleep Day is March 14.
In the United States, National Sleep Awareness Week is held during the second week of March. Created by the National Sleep Foundation in 1998, it didn’t always take place in March. National Sleep Awareness Week begins at the start of Daylight Saving Time, which fell on the first Sunday in April when the event was launched. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 moved the start of DST to the second Sunday in March starting in 2007.
Speaking of Daylight Saving Time, it’s March 9 for most of the United States. That’s only a week away. In 2023, I wrote about how to adjust to Daylight Saving Time for Forbes Vetted.
Today (March 2) is the perfect day for you to start making adjustments to your schedule. The experts I spoke to for that Forbes story said that pushing your bedtime 15 to 20 minutes earlier can help you prepare for that impending lost hour of sleep. You can also shift the timing of your meals and exercise routines so they’ll better align with the change.
I’m making a promise to myself that I won’t treat this year’s DST like that final paper I had in Honors Writing my Freshman year of college. I won’t wait until the last minute to get my shit together and then wonder why I’m running on fumes for the next several days. (And at my advanced age, those ill effects will likely last me weeks.)
Starting tonight, I’ll make sure I’m in bed asleep by 11:30. And as much as I enjoy dozing off to video essays on YouTube, I need to start keeping my phone way out of reach — maybe throw it across the room. Even when I wake up early, I stay in bed scrolling for up to an hour. That’s bad, I know.
I’ll still use my phone as an alarm, as much as I don’t want to. (Sadly, I tend to sleep through the haptic alarm of my WHOOP watch.) Maybe it’s time for me to find a sunrise alarm clock. Or maybe see what the Nintendo Alarmo is all about. Do I want to wake up to Mario yelling at me to wake up, only to find out that the princess is in another castle?
Now I open the floor to you, dear readers. Are you looking forward to DST? Should it be abolished? Or maybe it’s not even a thing where you live. (Looking at you, Arizonians!) Drop a vote in the poll below and/or leave a comment stating your case.
Thank you for reading the inaugural post of More Than Mattresses! I aim to publish one post a week, either on Sunday or Monday. Right now, I’m in that “figuring things out” phase so your patience (and useful advice) is much appreciated as I learn to steer this ship.
Sleep well,
Alison