apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Unfortunately, I hear the neighbors above me stomping around or worse...I'd take the ocean any day or night!

Ship horns from the Mississippi and the sound of the streetcar on St. Charles, several blocks away. They are two of my favorite sounds ever and never fail to make me happy and content.

Unfortunately, car alarms, sirens, and random mariachi music blasting are often what we hear in Downtown LA. I don't even notice it anymore - but I hope our next place is quieter!

My "alarm clock radio" has a USB port. I go to sleep listening to Pink Floyd or some oceans/streams/rain sounds that play randomly.

raven - do you sleep with fans on?

Crank up a fan on a relatively fast speed and the white noise will help a lot.

We sleep through fireworks that way. 3 years ago some neighbors lit off thousands of dollars worth including M-80s and we slept through it. I'd have been out there but some of us are scared of the noise.

We have a small pond near our bedroom and I love to hear bullfrogs twanging. The neighbor's fenced dogs barking is not so pleasant

Oh yea, I have to have a fan on every night! I make the boyfriend turn his on whenever I spend the night, and I seek one out where ever I go. I can't sleep with out it!

Laura
http://www.grafxnerd.net

Where I live now - near Boston: the T trolley rumbles by right behind my building and shakes it slightly. I thought it'd be a problem when I moved in, but now the sound seems nonexistant or quite soothing. The biggest annoyance is actually the chirping crosswalk.

Where I grew up - rural MA: the relaxing din of leaf peepers, paired with occasionally sitting up wide awake when a pack of coyotes sounds off at 3 am... followed by all the neighborhood dogs barking... and on an especially clear night, the distant airy shouts of a neighbor shouting back for them ALL to be quiet.

Usually, I fall asleep to the sound of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

sadly, i fall asleep to snoring. in stereo: my husband next to me, and the room mate down the hall. boooo

The snoring of a 90 lb Labrador retriever.

Before, in Oklahoma, crickets, frogs, and distant barking dogs (inevitably followed by reciprocal barks from my two). So much for that--now, I live in South Beach, with the sounds of general drunken happiness.

Redshoes: For awhile, I lived close to train tracks, and after moving, I'd wake up at night and think something was out of place, that something was wrong. I was missing the sound of the train, even in my sleep!

At home - traffic, the occasional sirens, and people talking on the sidewalks below.

At work - wind rushing through huge pine trees, birds, crickets, loons, coyotes, mosquitoes, and the faint din of a diesel generator.

Mine comfort is the siren thing too....in Vallejo, they had to cut a lot of firefighters/police officers, but luckily our new place is 2 blocks from a police station, and one block from the main fire engine route. I like it much better than when we lived in other parts of the city, and we couldn't hear any sort of emergency personnel!

Downtown in Montpelier, VT:

three churches have clocks that ring on the hour and the half-hour, but usually on or two are broken. so right now, just one wonderful church bell that rings away the night...

& the dive-iest bar here, Charlie-O's, closes at 2am, when the rest of this sleepy state capitol is pin-drop quiet, so I hear loud drunken buffoons at just about 2am, too.

also, a music school about a half block up... mandolin and fiddle!!

and the occasional sound of protesters - against the war, against or for gay marriage, against the occupation of Tibet.

Train whistles from three blocks away and bass - throbbing, hurts-your-chest, what-the-hell's-the-matter-with-kids-today bass.

My patch of street is a speed zone on the local highway and our youth roll through at 30mph.

Downtown LA traffic, helicopters, etc, the breeze knocking the windows, my roommate playing video games, etc... I just turn my fan on and put a pillow over my head and sleep like a baby!

Jumbo jets, baby. We live right off the end of the main runway of the Minneapolis Int'l Airport, so we get the lovely FedEx DC-10s coming in at 4am. Even our 9 month old sleeps fine with the windows open, though.

We've been lucky to have cicadas, tree frogs, crickets, and ceiling fans to send us to our slumber. Lately, thunderstorms have also been the soundtrack to our nights. If there is anything that bothers me too much to get rest I just throw some Will Oldham on to sing me to sleep. Problem solved. Honestly, unless the hurricane warning sirens are on we don't hear much from the outside world inside the home.

I fall asleep to sitcom reruns and my English Bulldogs snoring.

Now that the central air is on (which, like the heat too, sounds like a jet engine when it kicks on in these apartments) not much. I am (I)directly(/I) in the flight path of the hospital helicopters though. They are pretty low too, since they're landing not so far from here. I always say a prayer that they can land them, and not hit my building. Or crash (I)anywhere(/I) for that matter!

I fall asleep listening to audiobooks. I have a really hard time falling asleep without them because of my anxiety issues and the voice telling me a story keeps my mind from wandering as I fall asleep. Harry Potter works best, but gets boring, so I listen to things from the library too.

OOPS on the tags I did wrong!

Around here, the outside sounds are usually those of the CPR repair yard (pneumatic tools, crashing trains...) plus a few night birds. I tend to use a fan in the bedroom to generate white noise to mask those sounds. However, I spent last week in Victoria, BC, and I slept like a baby with those sounds. Even the buses running at 6:00 a.m. thirty feet from my window.

Here, in the suburban hills of LA, every night the freeway becomes the ocean. We're far enough away that we don't hear the crunch and grundle of trucks and traffic - just the whoosh and purr of cars carried up the canyon as crashing and retreating surf.

My wind chimes and if its really windy the trees blowing with the wind blowing through them.

It's one of the following -- a train, the downstairs neighbors either fighting or letting their baby cry for over an hour before checking on it, or the neighbors next to us blaring music or talking out on their balcony til 3am.

My house has a highway about 1/4 mile on both sides, trains about 1/8 mile away and takeoffs and landings from the airport yet I have never had an issue because of them

White noise. Can't sleep without it. It masks just about everything, including our party-hard college-age neighbors.

Ideally: nothing.

And once I'm asleep I can sleep through everything - even fire alarms (not safe!)

I live three houses from the beach but surprisingly enough I don't hear the sound of the waves BECAUSE MY A$$HOLE NEIGHBOR INSTALLED 2 COMMERCIAL AC UNITS UNDER MY BEDROOM WINDOW!!!

so actually I fall asleep to the sounds of my internal dialog plotting revenge on the mechanical beasts...

Back in Brooklyn I had to have the AC on every night to block out the blaring radio music and shouting of all-nights craps games on the sidewalk and the traffic noise of Flatbush Ave. Now that I'm in the upper burbs of NYC I fall asleep to crickets, frogs, and a distant creek. I love it, but my wife missed the traffic noise for a long time.

marpac sound screen/white noise...noisy neighbors be gone! it has greatly improved the quality of our sleep. couldn't survive without it.

Some nights its a party down at the BBQs. Other nights it's a concert on campus. On the good nights its the incredible chorus of frogs down in the ravine. The worst nights are the neighbors to my side banging around their house (What are they doing?)

Most mornings its the far off sound of construction for the new dorms. Often in the afternoon it's sirens from the fire station responding to lit candles and burnt popcorn in the dorms. Birds landing on the roof and airplanes landing at John Wayne.

we live very close to the bay here in san francisco. on really foggy nights we sleep to the sounds of foghorns from boats coming in and out of the bay. on still nights we hear the sea lions barking down at the pier. we LOVE it.

trains here too. i live 1.5 blocks from one of the main lines through London and 1.5 blocks from a seldom-used one that only seems to have traffic on it late at night. which makes me VERY glad i didn't buy the house backing on to that line when i first moved here.

there is also the main fire hall about 2 blocks away...

:-(

Traffic. Of course I prefer to fall asleep to the sound of ocean waves, but if I pretend hard enough the traffic sounds like that.

Where I grew up in Northern Minnesota, I fell asleep the loons calling in the summer, and wind in the winter.

When I sleep over at my parents place sometimes for holidays and what not, I love falling asleep to coyotes howling out in the desert.

As far as my apartment, I usually hear footsteps from above, cars starting, doors slamming, crappy music, and people yelling. Not so relaxing. My cats sleep on my head and are constantly purring, so that helps me fall asleep.

I grew up listening to rain on the roof, thunder, crickets, and the sound of my ceiling fan whirring above my head.

Nowadays, I fall asleep listening to buses and traffic and drunk people stumbling home from the bars in the Castro. And car alarms. And lunatics ranting about their oppression. And loud neighbors. Ahhh, city life.

We fall asleep to a pretty quiet downtown soundscape. Occasionally we also get fire trucks, trains, hobos yelling. In the morning there are sparrows and a garbage truck and the lady who lives down the hall and always wears heels. She is just a pair of legs in my mind, because I have never seen her.

None of this is unpleasant to hear at all.

i fall asleep to the sound of my neighbors playing mariachi music.

I am the luckiest girl alive having just moved to an apartment on Porthmeor Beach in St. Ives, Cornwall ENGLAND for 6 months.

The noise of the ocean is beyond anything you might imagine. And maybe more magnificent than that perhaps is the changing view. Dead calm one day and then mountainous waves the next. Intend on starting a blog to document this journey from my living room:-)

Here in Dubrovnik, Croatia, we live next to the sea. With no tide the sea is usually silent (like tonight, with silver seas and moonlight) or just lapping, though sometimes with the south wind we cannot even open the balcony doors due to the waves. The sea has kept me here for 5 years ...

rustling of the leaves on the aspen trees outside my bedroom, and soon if it ever warms up here in Colorado I'll have the sound of the crickets.

I live in Seattle's Capitol Hill and across the street from the freeway, which is several hundred feet below so I hear that when the windows are open, otherwise, not too bad since they are newer insulated models but I do keep the bedroom one at least cracked all year 'round.

However, I now have bad tennitus, grew up w/ one working ear and so I can just sleep on that good ear, ringing and all that that's what I fall asleep to most nights.

Hoever it's not been so bad that I don't hear the fire alarm in our building going off during a dead sleep. It happened once at about midnight and I heard it alright, even through the pillow, it was that loud. Thankfully it was a false alarm.

The occasional distant train whistle blowing, a neighbor's dog barking (rarely--I have very considerate neighbors), sometimes the ceiling fan if it's summer, the purring and then snoring of my cat, the faint ticking of a clock in the next room, the furnace kicking on and running if it's winter. All very comforting sounds indeed.

Cars, the occasional siren. Last night my cat kept me awake though, he was playing with a toy mouse in the bathtub. (Yes, he is strange.)

I fall asleep to the muni bus going by, traffic, random people talking, skateboards, etc. Occasionally we get sirens and car alarms at night, but not often. I don't even hear muni any more -- especially not since we get heavy drapes, sound-minimizing blinds, and a fan. Even though we're in the middle of the city, we can hear the foghorns on really foggy nights, too. It's lovely.

Waking up is another thing altogether. Neighborhood construction, semi trucks rolling by, rush hour buses... nothing compares to the dulcet tones of the GARBAGE TRUCKS. Seriously, of all the things that could possibly drive me nuts living in the city, the only thing that really bothers me is those damn garbage trucks. They're deafeningly loud-- impossible to drown out with the fan, the blinds, blankets over my head... And they come every morning. I really don't understand it.

I grew up in Monterey and whenever I go home to visit my parents, I'm always amazed by how well I sleep. I'm pretty sure it's because it's so quiet. Still, I love the city noise (except the garbage trucks). I just wish we had more birds.

SportsCenter or my boxer-pit snoring - I say that's his lullabye, when I hear him so deep into slumber, I can't help but join in.

I've got a fan that masks pretty much anything, but there's also a clock in our town square (which I'm steps away from) that rings every 15 minutes until 11pm. It starts up again at 8am, but I can barely hear it anymore. When I have guests over, they always complain but I think it's kind of charming.