How do I stop the small things that wreck a night’s sleep?

Three pages in this library are about a night spoiled by something small. Two duvets, or one size up is three in the morning, cold, with the duvet a mound on the other side of the bed. Put the sock on the doorknob is the thought that arrives as you are going under, and the choice between a pen and a lost half-hour or sleep and a lost thought. Step at the edge of the stair is the staircase that announces every step to a sleeping house. None of the three is medical, and each puts its safety lines before its tricks.

Buy the duvet one size larger than the bed, and if you share it and still wake cold, buy two. Two duvets, or one size up says thirty separate conversations, every one of the thirty, say the size on the label is the mattress size, and a cover that only just reaches the edges leaves one of you bare when the other turns; the extra width means the cover still reaches you after your partner rolls, and two conversations say you can wrap yourself in it like a parcel. Twenty-three separate conversations say the better answer for two people is a cover each, sized for one, so no one steals it, no one wakes cold, and a hot sleeper and a cold sleeper stop negotiating; one account says it is the norm in Germany, carried as a single account the page does not check, and two conversations add a shared quilt over both for cold nights. Which of the two you need is argued four accounts to four across conversations, and the accounts’ decider is whether the two of you sleep alike: the same temperature, the same amount of moving. If one of you takes the cover or runs hot while the other runs cold, the page says two is where the argument lands; if you sleep alike and like the closeness, one large one does it, and one account keeps a shared flat sheet under two duvets for the closeness. Before you buy, three corrections and eight conversations on the fine print: the California king runs longer than a standard king and is the narrower of the two, so one size up from a king may not add width at all, the rule simply runs out at the top of the range, the same nominal size varies between makers, so check centimetres, not names, and the cover has to grow with the duvet, and the washing machine may have to. A bigger duvet is sometimes worse: three separate conversations say an oversized one hangs over the sides and gravity pulls it off in the night, and the one contraindication on the page is for a hot sleeper who sleeps alone, because an oversized duvet can be too much to escape from. The page’s one caution that is not about comfort: if you are sweating through the bedding every night, one caution says that can be a medicine or a condition rather than a duvet, and it is a doctor’s question before it is a shopping one.

Move one object somewhere it never is, and say the link aloud. Put the sock on the doorknob says eighteen separate conversations do the same thing with the thought that arrives in bed: move an object to a place it does not belong, a sock on the doorknob, a cushion on the floor, the alarm clock turned upside down, because in the morning the wrong thing in the wrong place makes the brain ask why, and the why is the thought. One correction in those conversations is what the page calls the whole technique in one sentence: making a mess is not the point; the anchor is an unusual change in your surroundings plus saying the connection out loud as you make it, what the upside-down clock stands for. Five separate conversations describe the failure that correction answers: you wake, you see the sock, and you remember only that there was something. Two cautions say a trick built on one object cannot scale, since two thoughts need two objects and then you do not know which is which, and one exchange, one account to four, says a cue can only ever tell you that a task exists, not what it was; the page says the four are right for a detail and the trick is for a task. One conversation moves a hair band from one wrist to the other, which works at any hour and needs no floor; two keep a dry-wipe marker in the bathroom for the thoughts that arrive in the shower; two keep the notebook and pen on the nightstand, if you do not mind the light. Whether the phone is simply better is argued in nine conversations and settled in none: the phone stores the actual words and handles several reminders, and three accounts in the prevalence notes and one caution three accounts strong say picking up the phone at night ends in scrolling and lost sleep. The page carries three safety lines from the accounts’ own cautions: nothing sharp, hot or heavy on the floor, because three accounts in one caution rated high say an object on a dark floor is a trip in the night; nothing on the floor at all if you share the house with a pet or a small child; and never a medicine, because two contraindications and a caution rated high say a pill on the floor can be eaten by a dog or a toddler. One more, from one contraindication: do not write anything down while driving.

Did I take the pill? The bottle trick, and what beats it. The sock page’s second half is the bottle you cannot remember taking from. Four separate conversations turn it upside down after the dose and back before bed, so the orientation says taken or not; five separate conversations say a weekly pill organiser beats it, and one exchange, one account to four, scores the organiser better evidenced. The accounts’ reasons: the flip needs two remembered actions a day, and one objection says that if you forgot the pill you probably forgot the flip, so the bottle is not checking anything; a bottle can be knocked over, righted by a tidy partner, or left flipped so that tomorrow you cannot tell whether it means taken or forgotten; an organiser shows an empty slot, which one account says is a fact rather than a signal. And the line from the page’s safety fence, one caution rated high: for a medicine where a missed or a doubled dose carries real risk, a visual trick is not reliable enough, and the page’s own line, not the accounts’, is to use a weekly organiser, a blister pack or a timer cap, and to ask the pharmacist or the prescriber what to do about a dose you are not sure of. The page names no medicine.

Take the tread at its edge, put the whole foot down slowly, and keep a hand free for the rail. Step at the edge of the stair says nine separate conversations agree on the edges: the board is fixed to its supports at the edges and can flex and squeak in the middle, so step near the walls or the banister rather than the middle of the tread, and one account adds to avoid the centres of the very top and bottom steps. Five conversations say how to land: the whole foot down together, or rolled gently from the outside edge inward, rather than a heel strike or a tiptoe, because a point of pressure bends the board more than spread weight. Five separate conversations say a floor near heavy furniture or a wall is already pressed down or reinforced, so it has less room to move under you. The honest caution is that some boards creak whatever you do: one conversation’s accounts have stairs that are loud regardless of technique, so the people there make a map, remember which boards and which steps are loud and route around them, count the stairs so you can take them without a light, lift the door handle as you open and close a door that squeaks, one account says, and mask the sound with something already running. And the accounts think there is a point where you stop sneaking: in one exchange, two accounts to two, if the aim is not to wake someone and the house will not allow it, make ordinary noise, say what you are doing, and let the household learn that the sound is you.

Hands out of pockets, nothing in your hands, a hand near the rail. Four of the stair page’s conversations turned quiet stairs into a warning about falling, and the page carries their rules before their tricks. Never take stairs with your hands in your pockets, four separate conversations say, one account has the broken teeth to show for it, because a hand in a pocket cannot reach the rail when a foot slips. Keep a hand free and near the rail, three conversations say, even if you do not touch it; one high-rated caution says carrying things, a phone, a bag, raises the risk sharply, and several accounts describe falls that ended in broken bones or worse. Wet feet, wet treads and ice make it worse, one conversation says, even for the big and strong. The page says none of the quiet-walking tricks is worth a fall: if you cannot do one safely, make the noise. On the filthy public handrail, the accounts’ argument comes down on the side of the rail: one correction, two accounts behind it, says germs do not jump, contact is needed, and washing your hands afterwards is the whole precaution, and the four accounts who have fallen or watched a fall, and the two who name neighbours or acquaintances killed by one, say the rail. One strand of those conversations, sliding down a staircase on your feet, is not on the page at all, because one high-rated caution backed by three accounts says it risks a broken tailbone or neck.

Who these pages are not for. The duvet page is not for the hot sleeper who sleeps alone and would buy the oversized cover, and it sends the person sweating through the bedding to a doctor before a shop. The sock page names four readers: anyone whose floor is already a floor of things, for whom the wrist band, the mirror marker and the notebook are the page; anyone with pets or small children, for whom nothing goes on the floor; anyone whose medicine cannot be missed, whom the safety line sends to a pharmacist or the prescriber; and anyone with attention difficulties or executive dysfunction, where the page says its conversations split and a first-hand test is a gap. The stair page’s tricks are for people who can already take a staircase safely: if you have a balance disorder or cannot change how you walk without risk, the handrail line is for you and the foot tricks are not, and stairs with no rail are a gap it names.