I tried earplugs once when I dated a snorer and almost had an anxiety attack! Not really sure why, maybe it was my semi-conscious state worrying that I wouldn't hear a potential attacker or something. Or maybe it just felt too much like I was dead.

I have an ocean-wave white noise machine. And the traffic down below.

Every so often I shut off everything: the fans, the heat, the music, gadgets, gizmos, kick the pets out and shut the door. I'm hoping for silence. Then I remember my tinnitus (too many rock shows) and flip on the noisemakers. Gotta have something going.

No light, ceiling or floor fan, 400 thread count sheets, no pj's (pj's totally negate good sheets), 5mg. of melatonin, and (being a "side" sleeper) one chihuahua under the covers snuggled up to my butt and the other chi snuggled against my belly. Kind of a primal, sleeping-as-a-pack arrangement.

1st off, LUV this movie, one of my favorites ever! 2nd, I need SILENCE when I go to sleep...When I babysit my nephew or I go to my friends that have kids, coming home to my single Chateau of "what is that I hear?"...the sound of silence...is priceless. I'm enjoying my single-ness as long as I can because once marriage and kids arrive...there is no turning back! ;)

I once had a roommate in college that snored VERY loudly. But I got so use to it that when she went to sleep and started snoring, it made me want to go to sleep, too!

I can actually sleep through police sirens (as long as they aren't too loud) and airplanes overhead. But if I hear people walking around too much, doors opening and closing, or someone talking, it wakes me up

I grew up in the silent suburbs of Columbia, MD, where the loudest noise around was a Camry whooshing up the street. I now live on South Beach, over a causeway with a bus-stop in front of my bedroom, jet skis that race by, sirens, trucks, souped-up Hondas, motorcycles...

In the morning, the garbage trucks crash and bang and make backing up sounds.

I sleep with a fan on and a white noise maker. It helps a little. But I still haven't gotten a good night's sleep since I bought my place... almost 3 years ago.

I just moved to a townhouse that sits directly next to the expressway. While I thought this might bother me, it has some sort of oceanic noise that has lulled me to sleep every night. Its also weirdly comforting to know that when you can't sleep, other people are out driving in the middle of the night and you aren't the only one awake at 3 a.m.

I actually enjoy the sound of my dog's snoring. The sound is actually rather cute, in a grumpy old-dog kinda way.

Earplugs have helped me on numerous occasions, mostly when rooming with snorers. It sucks when they're loud enough to cut through the earplugs though. Because if I hear something like that, I don't care if I haven't slept in a month, there is NO WAY I can sleep.

I have only used a mask on the occasion(s) where a room sharer had to use a computer past the time I went to sleep--flashing lights and/or changes in light levels always wake me up.

I used to sleep with earplugs when the gardeners would come at 7am (sometimes earlier!) on Saturday. I usually can't do it though.

I wear a eye mask to bed if my boyfriend wants to stay up and read longer than me, but it's always off by morning.

I like quiet, and I can't sleep with the TV on - mainly b/c I find TV in general annoying as hell.

But I do like to drift off to CBC Radio 2 every once in awhile.

The BBC world service lulls me to sleep quite reliably. I think the British accents remind me of attending lectures in university, when I had no trouble nodding off.

I have a fan on for comfort and the noise, plus an air purifier set to low. No lights except that which comes through my blinds (still need black out curtains!), all doors and dresser drawers closed (OCD), 300 thread count cotton sheets, topped with a coverlet, my side-sleeper Ikea pillow, and a non-snoring corgi pup and equally quiet boyfriend, and I'm set! I don't have a tv in my room and reading doesn't put me to sleep, so going to bed = going to sleep. I just got a new alarm clock that simulates the sunrise in the morning - it has a white noise function, but when I used it for the first time last night, it was TOO loud. I can generally fall asleep even with low-level conversations going on outside, but I HATE waking up to a noise, whether it's landscapers or my neighbor who for some reason was laughing HYSTERICALLY next door at 6:30 one morning. I was not laughing with her.

HAVE to sleep with a television on. It's a habit I tried to break, but I cannot. Right when everyone is relaxing, my brain goes into freakout mode, thinking about death and all sorts of bad things and then I get start having a panic attack. I sleep on the couch most of the time because i don't have a tv in my bedroom. I'll go back to the bedroom every few weeks because my back or hips start hurting, but always with a nightlight. I'm not afraid of the dark, but I don't like being in the dark.

I realized that how uncomfortable it is, I cannot sleep soundly without my cat Clementine on my side, or asleep on the back of my knees. When I lay down to sleep, she hops up and starts kneeding me like a big pile of dough.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that I can nap like a pro. I can sleep soundly at any time during the day, take naps often on my lunch our, pass out on busses - but deep, restorative sleep for me is non exsistant.

TV on a sleep timer, pillows to make a nest, duvet tucked around my toes, my pitt bull at my back, boxer at the foot of the bed and other boxer snoring on my head.

I used to be ok without all the nesting, but after a death in my house it was very creepy trying to fall asleep. Now I cant sleep without noise or I'll spend the whole night jumping at each little creak or wind moan or thinking "something" is pulling at my toes or hair.

If I wake up in the middle of the night... gotta start the process all over

LOL, in law school I used to listen to the BBC to put me to sleep at night. Their voices are so even and have a lovely cadence. Though I also used to listen to them for news at other times as well.

I'm a very light sleeper and I get insomnia between 2am and 5am all the time...but when I do manage to sleep through the night it's because of ear plugs and melatonin. I wear ear plugs almost every night. I dislike the sensation of air blowing on me...there is a very narrow temperature range that I find comfortable. I also have trouble sleeping with others because they, you know, breathe. I can nap very well, however.

i always sleep to music (with headphones when bunking with someone else) and sometimes the songs find their way into my dreams. Both of my daughters have told me that i sing in my sleep.

I moved into an urban neigborhood with train traffic. I prefer no noise, but have grown accustomed to the noise. I even think I can tell the different engineers by the way they sound their horns.

Light is another thing. It must be pitch black or it triggers my sleepwalking.

A fan, iTunes or TV playing softly in the background, Midtown-NYC street noise below and sometimes helicopters circling overhead (I am on top of 5th FL walk-up). I've always slept with a radio but now I've grown completely accustomed to the noise and can't sleep in silence. When I visit my parents (who live in the middle of nowhere), I have to have music or TV playing otherwise the silence drives me crazy.

Similar to a previous comment - 2 Burmese cats nesting on my legs, lying on my front, avoiding the husband's reading light and I'm done. Usually get woken up at an ungodly hour by one of the cats walking over my head to get under the covers with us but it's become a second nature to just lift up the duvet and we barely come up from REM sleep.

I like being sung too - live. By the time the chorus comes around I am out.

The weight and warmth of my down comforter. It puts me right to zzzzz
zzz
z

When I was a kid, I lived in a small town and always slept with the windows open. You could hear the highway very distantly and the occasional train horn. I went to college in another small town where there were no train tracks and I missed the trains a lot!

Now, I live near train tracks, but there are so many loud students in my apartment complex that I can't sleep with the windows open. I hate teenagers.

I have a BioBrite Sunrise clock. It gradually dims over the course of an hour--or whatever you set it to--and gradually brightens to wake me up in the morning.
http://www.biobrite.com/products.php?category=SunRise%20Clocks

I also use the White Noise iPhone app, which operates on a timer, so I have soothing background sounds for a couple hours. http://www.tmsoft.com/iphone-whitenoise.html

Insomnia. Sigh.

I'm ok with normal neighborhood sounds of traffic and so on, the things you get used to in your normal sleep environment. But I go nuts when visiting someone with things like loudly ticking clocks, dripping faucets, weird little house sounds that are not familiar...

Ack... I sleep with ear plugs and an eye mask! I'm prone to panic attacks (for real), but the plugs and mask don't bother me.

we used to live in a very bad part of oakland. i'd never wear earplugs as alarming noises in my neighborhood -- even at night while sleeping -- were generally a good indication to duck/cover.

I swear I must be nocturnal. My natural time to fall asleep is sometime between 4 and 6am. Daylight doesn't prevent me from sleeping. One of my favorite ways to nap is in a bright sunny patch under a window, much like a cat.

Another sleep habit - I must be naked. The feeling of bunched up pjs never fails to wake me up.

Haha. That's exactly how I sleep: earplugs and an eye mask lol and I agree with undercover, no pj's for me.

I have to have a fan on (must be a fan, radio doesn't do it for me and TV only works if I'm napping on the couch with two cats sprawled across me). I can only fall asleep while laying on my stomach with my head turned to the right. I don't know what I'll do when I'm pregnant. Maybe I won't sleep for 9 months...

I use a noise machine app. The slowest speed of the waterfall is the perfect white noise. I got used to falling asleep to a lot of street noise in NYC and the quiet of my Minneapolis apartment freaks me out. Actually, the silence is ok - it's the random noises that break the silence that freak me out. The white noise turns it all into a nice, rumbly "silence."

I have a hard time sleeping without my boyfriend. He sometimes stays up all night working and I wake up several times during the night flailing around trying to find him in the bed; when I finally realize he's not there, I'm awake and grumpy for a few minutes before I fall back to sleep. Lately, our two cats have been sleeping on the bed if he's not there, and they tend to wake me up when they squish me into an uncomfortable position--I wake up with my some part or other stiff and sore and have to change position.

I can fall asleep to silence or noise. I grew up near a busy intersection close to some projects so you can imagine what fun noises I heard...which I am convinced were always firecrackers... My fiance cannot fall asleep without a fan on, which I hate not because of the noise, but because of the cold during the winter. The worst night we had was when the fan died and he couldn't sleep so I gave up and slept on the couch! The tossing and turning kept waking me up!

A couple of pages with a good old fashioned book and its lights out...

My parents bought a sound machine for their bedroom from Sharper Image when I was 5, way back in 1995. They would sleep with their door open, and I would as well, so I could hear it from down the hall and became use to it. In high school, I started having a lot of trouble going to sleep, and my parents bought me my own sound machine.

So, a sound machine on 'rain', as much darkness as possible, tons of blankets, and my teddy bear - I'm good. And I'm okay with being 20 and sleeping with a teddy bear.

I have slept with earplugs and a sleep mask (evil noisy neighbors bright light directly outside my bedroom window) and I actually sleep pretty soundly that way...once I manage to doze off. Soft music lulls me to sleep better than anything else.

I'm picturing 'undercover' -- stark naked, napping happily in the bright patch near the picture window... oh what do the neighbors think?

I love my sound machine, especially the crickets and all of the rain sounds. I do NOT love the train sound; I've tried that twice, and both times ended up in Dauchau. The weird part is, I love taking the train.

Whale song relaxes me, but cannot put me to sleep. My brain thinks its following a conversation.

I always sleep with earplugs (also the result of trying to slep with a snorer... never worked, mind you, even with the earplugs) and I need total darkness. Then again, I also thoroughly enjoy a few hours in a floatation tank...

I fall asleep listening to audiobooks to keep me from freaking out about what I need to do the next day. Without the cds my anxiety takes over and I can't sleep.

I can never sleep with ear plus or eye bands. The emptiness scares me to that. Plus, I love my cat's purring lulling me to sleep. :)

Husband snores, so, earplugs. The can't-hear-the-burglars! thing wore off after a few nights. Also, I'm a life-long insomniac and eventually was going crazy from lack of sleep, so: Lunesta. Best. Drug. Ever. No next-day hangover, can use it long-term. Ah, sleep.