Listicle: 10 Instagram accounts that feel like a warm hug

All through the pandemic, we watched the young Vietnamese student try to make sense of life in Germany. Renters can’t vacuum at night. Sausage tastes weird. Moms expect you to answer their calls at 3am. She’s settled in. Her #GermanBoyfriend is now her #GermanFiance. She can now open beer bottles with a quick whack. She’s still funny, in three languages.

The London writer, creator and musician caught everyone’s attention when he offered updates about his little chilli plant using poetry last year. We came for the rhyme, we stayed for the introspection and emotional connection. His short poems celebrate friendship, the feel of a warm bed, healing from illness, hair braids. Little joys. Enjoy as many as you can.

The American college administrator was struggling with self-criticism and negative thinking last year, and took to posting clips professing his gratitude for the little things. The really little things: Salt, towels, the ability to bend one’s knees all the way. Turns out, we all liked being reminded of the little things. Lorimer’s feed gets millions of views and almost no hate comments.

Instagram is not short on kindly Italian grandmothers. We love 78-year-old Nonna Fina from Australia mostly because, in addition to making 30 bottles of passata at one go, she can totally take a joke. She and her granddaughter Maddie have rated Met-Gala looks and thrown shade at meatless versions of Italian classics. Plus, as Maddie says in their bio: “She’s everyone’s Nonna now.”

She has a name, Danielle Krysa, and she has an eye for art posts that look great on the ’gram and give viewers something new to think about. Stained glass in a chain-link fence? She’s zoomed into the details. Naughty embroidery? She’s captured every dirty stitch. Ceramic glazed donuts? She’s found the best ones. Porcelain that looks like icing? That too. Art never seemed so accessible and so fun.

The self-professed world’s largest octopus fan club has eight tentacles and only geeks in the comments. The feed covers everything – videos of dramatic underwater octo adventures, info on rare sightings, viral clips of the molluscs solving puzzles and trolling their minders, octo art and hilarious cosplay. It’s like getting a soft squishy hug every day.

Filmmaker Martin Paves curates images from film archives to showcase an older, simpler, less PR-managed industry. There’s Kate and Leo, goofing around on the Titanic set in costume; Cher, coolly swishing her long hair for a photo shoot in 1973; Brad Pitt in diamond hoop earrings and a shimmery pink dress doing, we’re not sure what. Some pics have commentary too. Bingo!

15% on the internet is cats, anyway. We may as well lean in. The account puts up a new cat-themed doodle every day, based on images of real cats doing really stupid things. So, the usual: Furry derps trying to fight the Christmas Tree; tabbies with their favourite stuffed toy; gingers sprawled out on fresh laundry. You never know what’s coming next, just like with cats.

Auri is 30, and she drives around Finland, cleaning homes for free. Her pink rubber gloves have tackled everything from roach-infested kitchens to takeout meals piled up over the years. We don’t see the homeowners, but they tend to be old, infirm or battling mental-health issues, hence the mess. Auri hasn’t yet recoiled from a project. She’s methodical, never wasteful (unlike some rug-cleaning companies). There’s hope for our dirty plates in the sink yet.

The ’gram is bursting with comics and art about mental wellness. The ones by Worry Lines (the artist stays anonymous) are funny, more pragmatic than preachy, light but comforting. Some posts deliver one-line wisdom (“Not all things break when you let them go”), others visualise what overthinking looks like. It’s remarkable how 2,100 posts can all seem relatable.