What about earplugs?

Earplugs? I'm also a fan of the Ambiance app . There are many sounds to choose from and you can set the sound to gently fade over a period of time. You can even set it so that the application closes after the time is done.

I know what you mean about the birds. We went from living in a high rise (no trees for birds, squirrels, etc.) to a house, where squirrels and birds engage in a turf war every morning.

We're used to it now, but since we also have cars, air traffic, and trains (which we were already familiar with in a high rise), we've had guests who had difficulty sleeping because they were fine with the wildlife turf war but helicopter rotors and trains were unfamiliar.

I'm getting used to the early birds, really I am. Even though they start at around five or so. It's the next door neighbors four year old starting the morning at six with a top of the lungs, more or less tuneless, serenade about how much he loves his new kitten that got me. And he does this routine any time there's something he's excited about. If it weren't so darn cute, I'd talk to his mother about it.

My family moved into a house right next to train tracks in Atlanta when I was little, and trains would go through ALL NIGHT. When I say next to, I mean that there was only a very small house between us and the tracks, We thought we'd moved to hell. Then after a couple of months of that, it got to where we felt like we *couldn't* go to sleep until the first train of the night passed by! It's funny how these things work.

I have slept through a typhoon, traffic from the freeway behind my house to a horrific thunder storm but will wake up immediately if someone closes my bedroom door tight. That "click" is enough to wake me from a dead sleep.

I wore earplugs every night while living in SF. I can still hear the automated voice from the MUNI Bus ("30, Balboa").

Oddly enough, the silence was deafening when I had to temporarily move back to my parent's place in the Sacramento suburbs...it was TOO quiet and I could not sleep at all.

I am a light sleeper, newspaper hitting the driveway would wake me up. I started sleeping with earplugs 5 years ago. Will never go back. In fact I now have trouble sleeping without them, that's the only negative to it. Regardless, they work great, they muffle out enough sound that outside noise wont bother you, but your alarm clock will still wake you up, as will a pet knocking over some furniture.

Nothing wakes me faster from the dead of sleep than my cat sliding my glasses toward the edge of the bed side table.

So awesome that your friend was able to convince the restaurants to coordinate trash pickups times.

I much prefer the songs of happy chirpy morning birds any day over the mechanical banging, screeches, honking, engine gunning, and other noises us bipedal animals like to pollute the world with. But that's the trade-off of living in the city...

I asked my upstairs neighbor if she could possibly not wear heels at 5am. Her reply was "we live in a building." The next day she came to my door with her ginormous boyfriend who accused me of breaking in to their apartment through the fire escape and leaving nasty notes in their apartment. Now I am scared to death of them since they are clearly insane. I think also of the woman who lived downstairs from the Batman killer's booby trapped apartments. If she had opened that door...

In conclusion, noise machines and earplugs trump neighbor confrontations. If your neighbor doesn't notice how much noise they make, they probably don't care if you point it out to them because they are sociopaths.

zenezie: one of my cats does that too. passive-aggressive when they are hungry. ha

That early morning song is known as the Dawn Chorus. It begins just before the first daylight and the bird song often over lapses with the sounds of night creatures. It is a lovely sound not heard over air conditioners and urban noise…

My parents and sister have lived in their house for, oh, eight years or so, and they STILL complain about the magpies waking them up.

And ditto on the grumpy cats waking you up. Mine has taken to sitting on my chest and meowing in my face.

Who would want to drown out birds? Birdsong is one of the most joyful sounds in the world. Even squabbling jays are better than the backup alarm on a delivery truck, throat of a bus, car horns, the grinding of the trash truck. I often wake up to quail warbling.

It's funny, though, that when I first moved here I found the frogs and crickets deafening. Now I can sleep through coyotes howling (unfortunately, the dogs usually cannot).

My husband and I have had a running argument over the "dawn chorus" ever since the first morning it woke us up after we'd moved into our house 17 years ago.

I think the birds are celebrating the new day: "YAY! The sun is coming UP!!"

He argues that they are complaining: "NO!!! Go away, sun! I'm not done sleeping yet!"

I guess it tells you a little bit about our outlook on life, doesn't it?

Cicadas/catydids are necessary for a good night's sleep in my opinion. My husband grumpily disagrees. the difference between a Texas upbringing and a Michigan one, I suppose.

It's the motorcycles that are getting me these days. Not just normal ones, which are already loud, but SUPER loud ones. They need to be legally regulated. There's no excuse for them. I'm being awakened almost every night, sometimes more than once, between 2 and 3 a.m. - guys going home from the bars, I assume.

I used to be among those who bought into the "Harley's are just loud - but hey they're cool so I'll just laugh it off" line of baloney. No longer.

P.S., the motorcycles that wake me up are over a block away from where I live. THAT's how loud they are.

@Annie-O - We get helicopters. All kinds. Military, medical, and everything in between, and they fly at all hours of the day. You'll be drifting off to sleep and hear whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp.

Gotta agree on the motorcycles. Sometimes when they pass my car, it actually physically HURTS, they're so loud. All I can think is that the drivers are like Craig and Mark, the two little boys in my childhood neighborhood who used to ride their BIg Wheels in front of my house constantly, going "vroom vroooom VROOOOOM!" I always figured that when Craig and Mark grew up, they'd just buy Harleys and do real "vroom vrooms."

I live near a train station, and surprisingly am never ever awakened by the train going through. Go figure.

I looove hearing birds in the morning ... especially after a winter of closed windows and drapes drawn against the cold. Even the mockingbirds at midnight are a sweet treat ... I didn't know which bird decided to start singing so late, and they sing incredibly varied songs. So I looked it up, and doncha know, it's a story of love and lust. Juvenile male mockingbirds are calling out for a mate. Once I understood, the songs were even sweeter, and my dreams saucier.

Zenezie -- that's the noise that wakes me up almost every morning! It's very specific.

A few weeks ago, in a bout of too-much-caffeine insomnia, I was still awake and trying to fall asleep when the birds started at 4:15 a.m. Worst feeling.

Outside nature noises don't bother me much. It's apartment neighbor noise that makes me craaaazy. Because then it's not just the noise itself, it's the noise plus the rage at feeling trapped by someone else's rude behavior. So I moved to a top floor apartment, and life improved literally overnight.

I always keep a couple pairs of earplugs in my toiletries bag when I travel.

When I stay with my parents, I'm frequently woken up by chipmunks of all things. They're very territorial, and they like to sit in high places and chirp stridently. It's like a little rodent alarm clock in the tree outside my window.

I love the sound of birds in the morning. The only time I hate it is when I've been up all night with insomnia and that lovely song tells me that I've wasted a whole night trying to sleep.

Loud motorcycles are definitely my pet peeve. I can't believe there hasn't been a crackdown yet. Don't they realize how thoughtless their behavior is (I'm talking about revving the engine unnecessarily, squealing tires, general rudeness).

One year I lived near a bus stop. Never, ever again.

I recently heard a report about how urban noise is affecting birds - their songs have increased in volume in recent years so that potential mates can hear their songs.

I love to hear the birds in the morning. But I have to wear stupid earplugs because my husbands snores so loud. Talk about vibrations! Oh well.

That would be just one husband!

We live near a fire station and there's a minor bird in our garden that has learned to imitate the siren of the fire truck. But the one noise that can wake me up even from the deepest of sleeps is the cat starting to throw up.

We live next to a marsh, so birds, yes, we get a lot of birdsong, but they aren't the worst. Starting in March or so we have Spring Peepers, tiny 1/2 inch frogs that make a lot of noise. Then we get some kind of salamander that makes an unearthly noise, and then bull frogs. And coyotes, sometimes, and they set off the wolves (the wolves aren't loose, there's a wolf place just down the road from us.) Right at this moment, I can hear a young owl screeching every few minutes - their parents feed them for a long time after they've left the nest.

I love all the nature noises, though, I find them so soothing. Traffic noise is what I don't like. Or drunken party -goers having a screaming fight under my window at 3am, which happened recently when I was in the city.

I like a quiet bedroom. Here's how I've solved the problem:

Sound-dampening curtains work best if the fabric has a nap to it. Velvet, corduroy, heavy felt (AT has featured some wool felt curtains), and even damask work better than smooth fabrics.

My damask (in the bedroom) and velvet (in the living room) drapes are heavy, so I use a double rod & pull the drapes to the side and use lighter curtains during the day.

Bonus: The double-layered curtain+drape arrangement also insulates well. In summer, the drapes block heat in the afternoon; in winter, keep the bedroom warm at night.

Similarly, deep-pile carpet works better than thinner carpet. I put a thick-pile rug on top my standard apartment carpet. It shimmied around and annoyed until I got a "rug on top of carpet" pad, which keeps the rug in place.

Good luck!

I remember taking a vacation a few years ago in the Yucatan. I had left my apartment in the large city where there can be some fairly cacophonous traffic, but I deal, and had gone to the jungle. Arrival night was fine, went to bed, but about 5 am next day I was woken up and my imagination was afire - it was like the cast of Disney's Once Upon a Forest had gathered in and around a tree just outside my hut. I was imagining toucan, chipmunks, salamanders, warblers, bullfrogs, monkeys, macaws, possum, fox, raccoon, weasel, cuckoos, parrots, flycatcher, roadrunner, doves, finches, falcon, mot mots, swallow, sparrows - you name it, they were all sitting there, vocalizing wake up city girl!, waiting for me to stumble out, at which point they'd all scatter (I imagined). I had never heard so many different animal voices in one place.

There's nothing wrong with getting up when the birds do (or before) because it gives you a lot more day to do stuff. Maybe it's because I'm older than most people here but sleeping seems to be such as waste of time.

Ok, for all the bird lovers out there. What is the bird I am hearing now - I hear it in the midAtlantic and in the southeast when I'm there. It's loud, not particularly melodious, but I always tell myself that it's the bird that signals fall is coming soon. (Hopefully we will still have seasons, though they are merging now.)

Does anyone know what this August bird is? Even several suggestions - so I can listen to samples of their calls and figure it out.

I live in the suburbs and have to deal with the dawn chorus AND a lot of early morning delivery trucks! After 6 years of poor sleep I've finally started to use earplugs, but often I'm woken in the early morning by the local shop deliveries and find my earplugs lost somewhere under the duvet! :-(

I work nights, so there's no hope for me without a white noise app, bedroom fountain, thick black out curtains...or perhaps a new job!

I live so close to a small airport that I constantly see & hear planes especially in my bedroom that on top of my hubby watching tv late & my cats running around & playing has made me immune to noise. I basically exercise during the day to wear me out & read a book @ night until my eyes are so tired it hurts to keep them open.