i finally gave up the box fan for a sleep machine

This was something I needed to do and am glad I did it.

While I do champion the twin window fan where one fan brings air in and the other out, that's not the fan I'm talking about here. Rather, it's the bog standard 20 inch box fan. Not the pedestal type. Box type. As in the kind you just put on the floor and let it run.

Up until very recently, I always ran a box fan in the room 24 hours a day. At first I did it because I liked the breeze, but then I got very accustomed to the noise the fan makes. A "brown noise", if you will. I was so used to it that if I was in the room with the fan off, that bothered me and I had to turn it back on.

I finally stopped using that fan and replaced it with a sleep machine because I have to have that brown noise in the room. But I had to do it in a very specific way. More on that in a moment.

The two problems with running a box fan in the room 24 hours a day is dust and dry air.

There's always dust in a room and there's no way around that. It can come from the central air system, a standalone air conditioner, your shoes, your clothes, the window when it's open, and so on. Dust happens. That box fan, even on its lowest setting, will never let dust settle even on its lowest setting. And that means two things. Dust gets everywhere, more of it happens, and during sleep it lands on your face where you breathe it in right up your nose.

Dryness of the air happens because it's moving, even if only a little bit. I don't have a dry mouth problem, but whenever I'd wake from sleep, I'd immediately have to get something to drink because my mouth was so dry.

In addition to the sleep machine (sometimes known as a noise machine), I've also added a smaller humidifier to the room that I keep on my nightstand running at the lowest setting.

With the sleep machine making the noise I like, I can go to sleep easily, and running the humidifier puts just enough moisture in the air so I don't wake up with a dry mouth.

Problem solved? It almost wasn't.

I could not get comfortable with the sound of the sleep machine when on the nightstand, so then I had a thought. What if I put the sleep machine where the box fan is? That worked.

As stupid as this is, I have the sleep machine on the floor near the foot of my bed. In that location, having the noise coming from there is something I can agree with. But if it's on the nightstand, no way.

It would appear that not only does the noise matter to me, but it also matter where it comes from spatially. I always had the fan in a specific spot in the room, and since my brain likes that fan sound a.k.a. brown noise coming from that spot, the sleep machine has to go there.

Yes, weird. But it works.

Published 2025 Jun 26