What Allison Williams Can’t Live Without

As you get older, your sleep quality ends up being one of the biggest factors in your life. Another thing that I love is the Ozlo Sleepbuds. It’s a little bit more of a splurge. Sometimes I like to fall asleep listening to an audiobook or something. This knows when you fall asleep, and then it switches to white noise, which is great. Also, it can make an alarm go off only in your earbuds, so you don’t have to wake up your partner or anyone else sleeping around you. This must mean that I’m truly an adult now, because I’ve started waking up early to go through my inbox and texts before my son and husband are awake. So, when my alarm goes off at like 5 a.m., I’m not also waking up my husband and son. That would be a very grumpy household. I’ve become very reliant on these.

I was always a morning hair washer, but I have become an evening hair washer because of a product that I found in New Zealand. It’s a silk pillowcase on one side and a towel material with waterproof backing on the other. This lets me sleep with wet hair without worrying that it’s going to destroy my pillow or that my hair stays super-wet while I’m asleep. It is a game changer.

I just added this brand-new smart ring product called the Pebble Index into my ecosystem. I read about it last year and was like, This is exactly what I need. This is what my brain needs to function at the level of other people’s brains. It’s supersimple but supereffective. It looks like the Oura Ring, except it has a button. You push it, you talk into the microphone, and you say something like, “Remind me in 20 minutes to take the pizza out of the oven,” and then it sends the reminder to your phone. That’s the only functionality. It can also listen to you brainstorm something or whatever, but that’s my use case for it. With that, I’ve actually been able to liberate myself from being tied to my phone. That sense of like, If I don’t write this down, it’ll be gone forever, is not an issue anymore. If I suddenly remember something I have to do while I’m driving or sitting at a dinner, this allows me to stay where I am rather than pulling out my phone and taking me out of the moment. I’m not wearing it today because I have these fancy, beautiful rings on, but I keep pushing this as if it’s the Pebble Ring, but it’s not. It’s already become a reflex.

I’ve posted about this on my Instagram, and I know you guys posted about it, but I wear a fanny pack all day, every day. Everything in there, I clearly can’t live without because it’s always attached to my body. It’s not on me, which makes me feel a little weird, but it is in my eyesight. It’s about eight feet from me. It’s basically all the same stuff in there as the post. Everything is super-consistent.

I have so many favorite snacks. When I find something I like, I go hard. I’m obsessed with these blondies by Bella’s Baked Goods; gluten-free Oreos are delicious. I love a fridge cig Diet Coke every once in a while. My ultimate snack food, though, is popcorn. And the version of it that I love the most — unfortunately for my health, because who knows what’s in it — is the Movie Theater Butter microwave-popcorn bags. That’s the GOAT in my book. It’s the one that I absolutely love.

Something I’ve discovered lately because they advertised on our podcast is Nuuly. I am obsessed. I don’t really shop for my personal life, because I know what sizes are like and I hate going to try on clothes. Nuuly cuts that corner. Also, for a short-attention-span clothing person, it’s perfect. You have something for a month, and then you send it back and get new stuff.

I used to only buy plants in person. It was like a chemistry thing. Like, if I saw a plant across the nursery, I was like, “You’re mine, I have to have you.” I recently discovered the Sill, though, and it gets me. I get emails from them that are like, “Look at this plant. Isn’t she pretty? She’s unusual.” And I end up buying it. I have — I’m not going to say the number, but it’s over 50 houseplants. I’m a sucker for a philodendron. A purple hue or a red hue just looks exotic to me. If you have leaves with those colors, you’re going to end up in my house. But I’ll take really good care of you, I promise.

Travel-wise, I’m a big packing-cube girl. I don’t know how I used to pack a chaos of clothes loose in a suitcase. It breaks my brain. Now, everything has to be in a packing cube; it doesn’t make sense to me otherwise. I love the Paravel ones. They’re so pretty. I have both the compression ones and non-compression normal ones. I use them depending on how intensely I’m trying to pack clothes into the suitcase. It’s like, Do I really need to squish all this stuff in here, or does it just look cute and fit perfectly? It’s almost never the second one, by the way. I’m an overpacker like crazy.

My mom got me wearing compression socks on flights in my mid-20s. She was like, “Listen, baby aspirin and compression socks. We’re not fucking around. You got to walk up and down the aisle. You got to move your body.” She was absolutely right, and I’m really glad that she got me in that habit. Then when all my friends were pregnant and having to start wearing compression socks, I was like, “Oh, I’ve been here. I’ve been wearing them. Let me tell you.” I have a vast variety of them, so that’s a necessity. No DVT here.

I lived my whole life with eczema on a level that I just tolerated. I had tried prescription topicals, but I still had flare-ups and lots of itching. Maybe because it was always in the same place (my calves) and somewhat predictable, that it was my normal. Then, it spread to my scalp. That triggered me to talk to my dermatologist and that’s when she told me about Dupixent. It’s had a specific and macro impact on me. On a macro level, the act of experiencing something for so long, and then deciding to do something about it is a revolutionary thing for me. Once it cleared up, I realized I have been letting it dictate what I wear on the bottom half of my body. Whether I wore shorts or pants was kind of determined by not just the temperature outside but often what my legs looked like. I had to wear gloves to sleep when I was little to try to stop myself from itching. It was definitely disruptive, but I thought it wasn’t something treatable when the prescription topicals weren’t working. Obviously, everybody is different, and people should talk to their own doctors to see if it’s right for them. But I just want to make the point that if you’re experiencing something daily that is uncomfortable, it’s possible you do not have to tolerate it. For people who have tried and failed with prescription topicals, and who have moderate-to-severe eczema, this is something that might work for you. I was part of that group.