Darkness and some music/white noise to block out car traffic noises and people speaking close to my bedroom are helpful. However, my house is next to an elementary school and nothing really blocks their alarm bells and children shrieking, especially in hotter months, where I sleep with windows open (blinds closed). Only thing that helps is maintaining a consistent sleep schedule and waking up before school starts. Unfortunately, falling to sleep is very difficult for me, even when being tired from work and working out.
In recent years, I have found an exceptional tool though: E-book readers with warm (yellowish) front-light, that are small enough to prop standing comfortably with one hand (due to limits of sleeping positions, for once). I have loaded some mildly interesting books in there and I read a little each night, until I fall asleep holding the device, which then slides horizontal and powers down automatically, since I am not taping "next page". I am not an avid reader and hadn't touched books for ages before trying this method. Nevertheless, thrilling (subjective) or though provoking books can keep me up all night, so I avoid them in favor of something silly (Tolkien is amazing to hel you sleep). A small entry-point (or just above) black&white device works best, as long as it has yellow front light of configurable intensity (I am in Europe, so Pocketbook had some excellent choices).
There are workarounds, but they do not work as well:
- Traditional books are heavier and more difficult to balance standing, while trying to sleep. They also need a secondary light source, such as a lamp, which provides warm light too, but too much to fall asleep and I have to close it myself.
- Conventional screens of smartphones and tablets are backlight and bombard your eyes with blue light, waking you up. Their batteries also last 1/100th of the time an e-reader's battery lasts. That said, when I sleep somewhere I don't have access to my e-reader, I use my phone instead.
- There are some fancy full-color and tablet sized e-readers, but these are too large and heavy to balance standing while trying to sleep, too expensive to get into and mostly intended for reading comics.