Things We'd Never Have In Our Bedrooms

• If we think about what the function of our bedroom is then it will help us to establish what we want to keep in it. A few things to consider about your bedroom are; What do you want to see when you wake up? What do you want to see before you go to sleep? What type of environment feels right for you? The possibilities are endless!

• Your environment needs to help you feel safe, peaceful, loved, and restful, with a sprinkling of calming joy. Look around your room and see if there is anything there that is disturbing your chance of peace. It may be a pile of laundry, a chair filled with worn clothes, a floor covered with various items that you are having to navigate around, or a wardrobe that isn’t functioning as a wardrobe due to overflow!

• Make a list, or a vision board of how you want your room to look. Then make bullet points of how and when you will create it. For example, if having a clear bedroom floor is important to you then bullet point number one will be clear the floor. Gather everything together from the floor and put it into categories. Decide where it would best be stored and put it there. Tick off your list. Step 1 done! If you continue along this line in no time at all you will have personally created your dream bedroom.

Jane Fern

• In a dream work I’d have no screens, but that just isn’t possible with limited space and busy lives. That doesn’t mean they have to claim the space. Look at what rituals and rhythms would support you and adjust them accordingly, eg. No phones in bed after 9pm or until you’re up and dressed in the morning. Your bedroom is a place for deep repose, to cleanse the day and prepare yourself and your body for the next. Use it so you awake feeling vibrant, fresh and ready each and every day.

Jenny Hayes

• Your phone. Especially if you don’t trust yourself not to scroll mindlessly. It’s a well known fact that screen time isn’t conducive to a healthy sleep routine and the temptation to check for messages or updates is just too much for many. If you need to be contactable in an emergency, leave the phone where you can hear it and let the family know to call rather than message if it’s urgent they reach you.

• And if the phone isn’t by your bed, you avoid messy charger cables too.

• Stacks of books and magazines. One of each is fine, as is your kindle but otherwise they are dust magnets best kept in another room.

• Outdoor coats and footwear. Both are in contact with seats and streets which are not a good mix in the privacy of your bedroom. If you don’t have the option to keep them anywhere else, find space in a wardrobe rather than on the floor or a chair.

• Work related papers or equipment. In an ideal world, keep anything to do with work completely out of the bedroom. If that’s impossible, either remove what you can overnight to another room, use a basket or bag to pack everything away for the night or at the very least, clear and clean your workspace so it looks calm and organised. If you work from home, it’s hard to separate those two worlds. So anything you can do to avoid those 3 am wide awake world and work problem sorting times, is worth a little effort.

• Pets. A controversial view but unless you’re a very heavy sleeper, chances are you’ll be nudging each other awake several times during the night. And if pets sleep in your bedroom or bed even, you’ll need to vacuum and change bed linen much more frequently for hygiene reasons.

• Laundry, dust, and clutter. Nothing nags more than clutter gathering dust and a pile of dirty clothes. All you see as you try to relax is everything you haven’t done, a physical To Do list.

• Laundry and clutter also contribute to a stale musty bedroom smell. Set time aside for a thorough declutter, a deep clean, change bedlinen and wash all soft furnishings. Open the curtains and the windows. You’ll guaranteed sleep better with fresh air and clean room.

• Gifts, artwork, ornaments that you don’t love or particularly like. Treat you bedroom as your sanctuary, a peaceful place where you can deeply relax and get a good night’s sleep.

Mimi Bogelund

• Avoid having piles of papers, books and stuff on your bedside table or piled up around the bed as this clutter is extra stimulus and noise that your brain has to process - it helps if that’s not the last thing you see before you switch off and go to sleep. I try to make sure my bedside table is always clear and will leave a pen and small notepad in a drawer just in case I wake up in the night and need to write something down.

• With the increase in working from home lots of people have had to find space in their bedrooms for a desk and somewhere to work but in an ideal world we’d make sure that your work life is kept separate from the bedroom space which should be a calm, relaxing space where you can relax and fall asleep without any triggers from the day. If you have no choice but to use your bedroom as a work area then make sure that you pack away your work at the end of the day, removing papers, laptops and any work ‘stuff’ in to another room (or put in a cupboard or basket out of view), change the lighting and light a candle to shift the atmosphere in the room and make it feel like a different space.

Sue Spencer

• A restorative nights sleep is everything so should be given top priority and Bedrooms should be dedicated only to sleep. That is, the only reason you go in there is to sleep (or to change, assuming your wardrobe is in your bedroom).

• Work desks - If your desk is there, your thoughts at night will be drawn to work so if possible try and take your work elsewhere, Best to keep TV’s , mobiles, tablets out of bedrooms too.

• Clutter. It can be harder to get a good nights sleep when your surrounded by clutter – it’s distracting and certainly doesn’t create a calm atmosphere . Think about when you’re were last on holiday and stayed in a hotel and how easy it was to get to sleep in such a calm, uncluttered environment.

• Floordrobe – not just the domain of teens! Get everything off the floor and back in the cupboard. It really will save you time in the morning when you’re not scrabbling through a pile.

• Chair/exercise bike – so many of my clients have a chair or exercise bike in their bedroom that isn’t used for the purpose it was designed for but has been repurposed as a make shift clothes horse.

Victoria Nicholson

• I would never have a TV in my bedroom. The primary purpose of a bedroom is restful sleep and having electronics with blue light is detrimental to that.

Rosie Barron