My partner played me a recording of my own snoring. It sounded like a lawnmower inside a cave. I was horrified. She was exhausted. The internet wanted to sell me a hundred dollar mouthpiece, a chin strap, and something called a “smart nasal dilator” that connected to an app. I was not buying any of it.

I tried three free things first. Two of them worked. Here is what actually made a difference.

Sleep on Your Side, Not Your Back

Back sleeping is the number one cause of positional snoring. Your tongue and soft palate collapse backward into your airway. Side sleeping keeps the airway open. The problem is staying on your side after you fall asleep.

The tennis ball trick: sew a tennis ball into the back of an old T-shirt and wear it to bed. Every time you roll onto your back, the discomfort makes you roll back to your side without fully waking up. It sounds absurd. I did it for two weeks. My partner said the snoring stopped on night one. After two weeks my body learned to stay on its side and I ditched the shirt.

Clear Your Nose Before Bed

If you cannot breathe through your nose, you breathe through your mouth. Mouth breathing at night vibrates your soft tissues and creates snoring. A saline nasal rinse before bed — the squeeze bottle kind from the drugstore, about eight dollars — clears out whatever is blocking you. Allergies, dust, dry air residue. Do it over the sink. It feels weird. Breathe through it. Your nasal passages will be clearer than they have been in years.

If your bedroom air is dry, a humidifier helps too. Dry nasal passages swell and narrow. Moist air keeps them open.

What Did Not Work for Me

Nasal strips. They opened my nostrils but my snoring came from my soft palate, not my nose. Different mechanism. If your snoring is nasal — you can test by closing your mouth and trying to breathe through your nose — strips might help. For me they were a five dollar waste.

Elevating my head with an extra pillow made my neck hurt and did not change the snoring. There are wedge pillows designed for this but a stack of regular pillows is not the same thing.

The fix that worked cost eight dollars (the saline rinse) plus whatever an old T-shirt is worth. My partner sleeps through the night. I wake up without the sore throat that used to greet me every morning — turns out snoring dries out your throat too. Win all around.