It’s been over 2 years now since we made the switch to buckwheat pillows, and I’m still as much a fan of them now as I was then. I’m not going to waste your time retelling why I like it so much – I’ll just link the blog post here – but I did want to share something I’ve been trying out over the last 3-6 months that’s made a really lovely difference to how well I sleep at night, and that is adding herbs to my pillow.

Since the inside is loose buckwheat it occurred to me that I could add a variety of dried herbs in with it to help with my sleep. Since I change out the buckwheat husks every 6-9 months, I can easily change what plants I use regularly, and I’ve even started changing it with the seasons so I can adjust the scent to what I need (ie. cool scents in the summer and calming scents in the winter).

These are the herbs I’ve used so far: 

Lavender: Probably the most obvious thing to use since it’s well known to help with sleep, but even just a handful of dried lavender is surprisingly strong. I’ve found that if I use more than half a handful of this the smell is far too overwhelming to have a good night’s sleep, so I normally use a small pinch of it mixed with other plants like chamomile.

Chamomile: As much as I despise chamomile tea, I love the scent, it’s so calming. At the moment I have a mix of one handful of chamomile and half of Lavender, and the combination is really soothing.

Eucalyptus: I (or rather my husband) prefer this for when it’s far too hot for him to sleep comfortably. Once we have some spearmint growing in the garden – which had a much cooler smell – I’ll add this to the mix as well. It’s especially nice if the weather is hot or you have a little bit of a blocked nose. It won’t do anything if you have the mother-of-all-colds, but it will help with mild stuffiness.

Lemonbalm: An incredibly calming lemon-mint smell, I’ve only just started using this and I love it!

Peppermint: Also a lovely minty fresh smell that’s lovely when the weather is too hot.

We recently added Spearmint to the garden and I can’t wait to try it out in the pillows. It’s such a fresh cold minty smell, it’ll be absolutely lovely once the weather warms up later in the year.

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