There are pockets of time that we often have during the day or evening. Whether it’s between work tasks or helping with our kid’s homework, there’s always a few minutes here and there. We need to take a breather for 15 minutes, or longer during lunch, to take our mind off more serious things in life. It often helps to clear the mind and get some energy back ready for the afternoon.

Here are a few useful home entertainment options when you need to take a break.

Streaming TV or Movies

When you have a spare block of time of, say, 45 minutes or over an hour, then you might want to consider steaming a movie. Sites like Let Me Watch This.Com and Netflix have an enormous library of past hits in the TV universe and from the silver screen to entertain you. While you’ll never find every hit on any one site, it helps to be flexible about your viewing options to find something that’ll be fun and relaxing to watch in your downtime. Rather than being stuck with fixed time programming on network television, being able to stream content to your PC or widescreen TV provides greater flexibility.

Instagram Stories

Instagram and now Facebook have stories. The Instagram stories are comprised of photos or video content, or both, to tell a story or communicate a viewpoint much more easily than if you look at a simple photo on an Instagram account. For people that you follow on Instagram, you can click the circle with the account owner’s image or logo near the top of the app screen to start viewing their story.

Stories are meant to capture a moment in time. Therefore, while photos shared on an account stay there if the owner of the social account wants them, the Instagram stories only stay up for 24 hours. Then they’re gone forever! They make a perfect break between tasks because a series of photos in rapid succession or single video clips don’t tend to last more than a few minutes each.

YouTube Trending Video Clips

Watching YouTube is fun to do. We tend to stick to the YouTube channels that we’ve already subscribed to and view new content when alerted about it or by scanning our subscriptions page. It’s also a good idea to see related video content next to the video to find other interesting videos or channels that we may like.

When you want to see something new and potentially interesting, then check out the trending video section instead. While the trending videos may be a little tailored to your known interests based on your viewing habits on YouTube, for the most part, these trending videos are shown based on their number of views over the last 24-hours. It can be a little like channel hopping with a TV to find something good, but you can discover the occasional gem that you would never have known about otherwise.

Finding something entertaining to fill up your small slots of free time here and there is best done with an internet connection that can stream content smoothly. There’s nothing like having repeated video buffering problems that interrupt your viewing pleasure, turning into a frustration-filled break time. But when the internet connection is fast, there’s one thing for sure – you’ll never be bored again.