If you're a parent, you probably know the value of baby sound machines that fill your infant's room with white noise when he's trying to sleep.
These machines are soothing to the nerves, and because they drown out background noises, they can help a baby fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.
You can buy many different machines, from super-small one-speaker affairs to larger machines that give you several different white noise options for your child.
Did you know, though, that you can actually use baby sound machines for your older children or for yourself? It's not only babies that have trouble sleeping when random noises keep interrupting their sleep cycles.
Older children can have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and so can adults.
While it's common to use box fans in a child's room or in your own bedroom, baby sleep machines might actually be a better idea for both older children and adults for a few reasons.
For one thing, the technology behind these sleep machines makes them more soothing.
The research that these machines are founded on ensures that they actually give out noises that are soothing to almost everyone.
This means that the sounds are inherently soothing and are good for more than just masking background noises like a fan will do.
Plus, baby sound machines are more compact than fans, which means they're easier to move around.
If you go to a hotel or a relative's home to stay for a while, you can more easily pack a small sound machine than a large box fan, which means you and your children will sleep as well away from home as you do at home.
Besides this, though, baby sound machines are going to be easier to clean than box fans.
Instead of disassembling them to get all the dust off the blades, you just have to wipe them down with a dry cloth every so often.