Do you need an eye cleanse? Something to take the edge off? Any of these will help.

We get it - we live in a stressful time.

We're not just talking about the current state of the US Elections, the impending environment cataclysm that surrounds itself on a daily basis, the current lockdown and pandemic in Ireland, the fact that cinemas are closed and nobody's sure when they'll reopen, or even any myriad of worries in your own life.

Times are stressful. So, how do we deal with it? By watching hours-long YouTube videos and zoning out to them, obviously. In recent years, there's a bit significant uptick in videos that feature calming ambient music, or people silently working away at something.

We're not talking about ASMR because that's another thing entirely (and frankly kind of weird), but rather long musical pieces - often from videogames, we find - and simple crafting videos.

Given everything that's going on at the moment, we thought we'd share some videos that the entertainment.ie editorial staff use to calm themselves with.

Here goes.

 

9.

This is actually just 90 minutes of music looped from the game soundtrack for 'Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion', but really, you can just drift right off listening to this.

8.

You might think, "there's no way anybody would watch a 13-minute video of someone making Japanese dumplings", or similar content for that matter. Buddy, you're way off. The YouTube channel this is from - Peaceful Cuisine - has 3.73 million subscribers.

 

7.

Black-and-white footage of someone playing Ludovico Einaudi? Oh yeah, that's the good stuff.

 

6.

Maybe it's just because 'GBBO' is a thing at the moment, but icing up a cake without any talking or music is just very, very satisfying to watch / listen to. That said, if you like those ones with the cheery music on Instagram, you can't go wrong with something like this.

 

5.

A fluffy dog, a beautiful rustic setting, someone playing a song on the kalimba. You take 41 seconds out of your day. This is like a loading screen for something really, really nice.

 

4.

Yes, we're breaking the rules here, but it's too good not to show. The entire Instagram page IFYOUHIGH is just filled with this kind of stuff.

 

3.

Neatly folding furniture and cupboard design hits some nerve centre in our brains. And! Real moss! Timber tiles! Refreshing showers!

 

2.

Makeup tutorials with no speaking are a strangely calming experience, even if you don't wear makeup or know what contouring is.

 

1.

There was no way whatsoever we were going to do a video about calming YouTube videos and NOT put this in somewhere.