+
upworthy
Health

Sleep so deep it's almost a spiritual experience

These Baloo products give the gift of a better bedtime and offer a wholistic approach to your nightly routine with their sustainable designs

Sleep so deep it's almost a spiritual experience

Baloo luxury weighted blankets welcome in that spa like refresh, every night of the week. From their sustainable weighted comforters to their Tone Therapy Speakers and Sleep Stone Mask they are absolutely revolutionizing our bedtime routine – and here's how:




Let's talk weighted comforters. Baloo's strategically designed comforters are heavy where it counts: in the center. With airy edges, this bedding is designed to have a little overhang, which not only makes it easier to care for, but also lets you feel freer in your weighted-blanket swaddle. With a range of different designs varying between 15-25lbs, these comforters have just enough oomf so to give you that massage-like, comforting hug that you want in a weighted blanket, without really making you feel "weighed" down.

Speaking of, their weighted blankets are also some of the *coolest* on the market, and we don't just mean aesthetically! They're designed to be breathable so that they can be used in year-round climates and fit perfectly on your bed with minimal overhang. Use them on top of your duvet or between the sheets for that added bit of swaddled comfort year-round. Check them out here and use the code UPWORTHY to get 15% off your order from June 15 – July 15!

While you're there, you may as well see how Baloo's changing our nightly routine. Spoiler alert: it's with this Sleep Stone Mask. You ever heard the expression "you need to sleep on it"? Well this mask was designed for deep contemplation. With a crystal pouch over the third eye chakra it's a great way to help open one of your eyes while your other two drift off into your sub-conscious. Chose amethyst for grounding, rose quartz for stress relief, agate for balance or fluorite for intuition and let the energy of the crystal go to work while you drift off to sleep. This mask is sound muffling, light blocking and supremely comfortable – making it a MUST for your sleep routine.

But crystal sleep masks are the only part of Baloo that get a little *woo-woo*, and we're not mad about it. Their Tone Therapy Speakers give you that fresh sound bath feel, anywhere. The pair play sounds that wash meditative tones over you for three minutes twice a day. Use them in the morning so you can ensure that you wake up on the "right" side of the bed and again at night so you can go to sleep feeling that sound bath *ahhh*.

If tone therapy and sleeping with crystals still isn't enough to relax your psyche, know that this female-founded company is not only carbon neutral, but ocean positive. Baloo's partnered with SeaTrees by Sustainable Surf to help plant mangroves along the island of Biak, Indonesia and also to reintroduce kelp forests off the coast of California. Both of these initiatives help boost local ecosystems and can sequester five times more carbon than tropical rain forests!

And that's not the only way that Baloo gives back. They also donate a portion of their profits to the Pajama Project, an initiative dedicated to providing the most vulnerable children, like those that are houseless or living in foster care, with new pajamas and a book to read for a reassuring bedtime.

Which is essentially what Baloo is all about! So snuggle up sustainably with Baloo's weighted blankets. Order now and take 15% off with the code UPWORTHY through July 15th!

Upworthy has earned revenue through a partnership and/or may earn a portion of sales revenue from purchases made through links on our site.

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

Keep ReadingShow less

A guy passes out on his bed eating pizza.

A 29-year-old woman had a baby girl, and after a brief maternity leave, she had to return to work. She couldn't afford childcare, so her husband, 35, reluctantly agreed to watch the baby while she was at work.

“It’s important to know that he’s been unemployed since 2021,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s AITA subforum. “He receives benefits. It’s also important to know that he’s extremely lazy. He doesn’t cook, clean, or help out in any way. I was nervous about leaving her home with her father, but I had no choice.”

The mother had reason to be worried about leaving her baby home alone with her husband, but in the beginning, things seemed fine. “When I came back from work, she was clean and sleeping. The next few times I came home, he was either playing with her, feeding her, or out for a walk with her. I was happy,” she wrote.

Keep ReadingShow less

A boy doing the dishes.

A 41-year-old mom with 3 boys, 12-year-old twins, and a 10-year-old, pays them $10 daily to do their chores. However, their pay is deducted $10 if they miss a day. The boys have to do their tasks 5 days a week, although it doesn’t matter which days they choose to work.

“This system has worked swimmingly for us since it started, the boys have always complied with completing their chores,” the mom wrote on Reddit.

Her 12-year-old son was getting ready to play Fortnite with a friend and told him he’d be ready in 15 minutes once he finished his chores. When the boys started playing the game, he told the friend he was in charge of dusting and sweeping the stairs, to which the friend responded, “It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.”

After learning what the friend said, the mom told her son that chores are genderless.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

Women do better when they have female friends.

Madeleine Albright once said, "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." It turns out that might actually be a hell on Earth, because women just do better when they have other women to rely on, and there's research that backs it up.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that women who have a strong circle of friends are more likely to get executive positions with higher pay. "Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of 1-3 women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination," Brian Uzzi writes in the Harvard Business Review.

Part of the reason why women with strong women backing them up are more successful is because they can turn to their tribe for advice. Women have to face different challenges than men, such as unconscious bias, and being able to turn to other women who have had similar experiences can help you navigate a difficult situation. It's like having a road map for your goals.

Keep ReadingShow less

Derrick Downey Jr. has been dubbed the 'squirrel whisperer.'

Most of us who live in the U.S. are used to looking out a window or walking out our front door and seeing squirrels. The cute, fluffy-tailed rodents often appear perfectly pettable, but they generally scamper away when humans get too close.

That is not the case for TikTok creator Derrick Downey Jr., however, as he has not only befriended his neighborhood squirrels but goes all out to help them live their best squirrel lives.

Downey shared a video in May of 2022 in which he chats with a couple of squirrels on his porch while feeding them and offering them water. That video received over 26 million views and kicked off a whole series of videos showcasing the adorable antics of Richard, Maxine, Hector, Consuela, Norma (may she rest in peace), and Hood Rat Raymond. He's built Richard a house, rescued Maxine's babies, mourned Norma's transition (to wherever squirrels go when they die) and more.

People can't get enough, and who can blame them? Squirrels are the best (when they're not tearing up your patio furniture and stealing cotton for their nest, as Downey has experienced.)

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Voice recordings of people who were enslaved offer incredible first-person accounts of U.S. history

"The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak." - Ted Koppel

Library of Congress

When we think about the era of American slavery, many of us tend to think of it as the far distant past. While slavery doesn't exist as a formal institution today, there are people living who knew formerly enslaved black Americans first-hand. In the wide arc of history, the legal enslavement of people on U.S. soil is a recent occurrence—so recent, in fact, that we have voice recordings of interviews with people who lived it.

Keep ReadingShow less