Sleep masks are great

Posted On August 28, 2017

I bought a new sleep mask on Etsy recently and I want to have a bit of a rave about it.

I used to have a cheap supermarket one, which sufficed, until I inexplicably lost it in my own house. It’s not down the side of my bedside table, and where the hell else can it be?! After a while I conceded to getting a new one, and so I went to Etsy where I knew there’d be a lot of nice stuff.

I did actually have some sleep masks in my favourites already, but they seem to have vanished so I can only assume the shop is on hiatus or has been deleted or something.

With that, I did further browsing and came across the lovely mask I have now.

So, what’s the deal with sleep masks, eye masks, blindfolds, or whatever you want to call them? I used to have an association of them with old-timey films, and didn’t really think much about them until I noticed Lucille Bluth wearing one during my many re-watches of Arrested Development.

I realised they might be useful for me for a couple of reasons:

1. Migraines. I’m not photosensitive during all of them, but when I am it’s horrible. Sometimes moving my eyes just makes me feel sick, so putting the mask on can discourage that.
2. There is a streetlight right outside our bedroom window, and although we’ve put blackout liners on the curtains, they’ve half fallen down and sometimes the light level is annoying even for me, afraid-of-the-dark-as-an-adult Letti.
3. I can avoid making eye contact with any spoopy ghosts and live blissfully in denial!

I’ve not traditionally liked the idea of having something on my face all night, but I’ve taken to it quite well. Somehow, though, I sometimes wake up to find that, in the night, I took my sleep mask off and hung it back on the hook at the side of the bed, in my sleep?!

 

I found an image of this mask via Google, and while it’s very apt, it unfortunately doesn’t actually seem to be for sale anywhere.

In the end I found a nice mask that not only has a vague outer-space pattern on it, it also glows in the dark! It’s subtle, but it’s nice, and I imagine it might be quite handy for finding the mask in the first place in some situations, such as when camping.

I got the mask here on Etsy and the shop has plenty of other nice ones too.

 

I also have a gel eye mask for when my actual eyeballs are especially painful, you can put it in the fridge to make it nice and cold. But, a lot of light gets through it, so I wouldn’t advise using it as a full-time sleep mask (plus there are probably times when you don’t want cold eyeballs).