Kayden Hines is the illustrated alter ego of Clare Kayden Hines, a California artist whose comics about adult life became an Instagram hit in 2018. Her cartoon self, a blonde woman with a sleep mask, a coffee cup and a small dog, faces the same tiny battles as everyone else: the snooze button, the phone call she keeps putting off, the avocado that goes from rock-hard to ruined in a minute, the dishes left "to soak".
The comics use a handful of simple formats again and again: "there are two types of people", pie charts and line graphs, and expectation-versus-reality panels. That repetition is part of the appeal. You know the shape of the joke, and the pleasure is in recognising yourself in the punchline.
Below are 30 of her best-known pieces, grouped by theme, with a note on what each one captures.
More info: Instagram
The artist and her alter ego
Hines started the account in October 2017 and has said it was the first time she had made proper comics. At the time she worked at a large tech company and felt she had no creative outlet. She invented a cartoon version of herself to express the gap between doing everything adults are "supposed" to do and a growing reluctance to do any of it. In her own words: "She was my comedic release."
Her stated goal goes a little further than a laugh. By finding comedy in very ordinary moments, she hopes readers will feel less alone when they see their own habits on the page. Judging by the comment sections under her posts, which fill up with people tagging friends and partners, it works.
There are two (or three) types of people
The toilet-roll debate in three panels: paper hanging over the front, paper hanging against the wall, and a fresh roll simply balanced on top of the empty tube. Over versus under is a genuinely long-running argument; most of Seth Wheeler's late-19th-century patent drawings for perforated rolls, including one from 1891, show the paper hanging over. The third type needs no explanation.
The same three-panel comic also opens this article, which is fitting, as it remains one of her most shared pieces.
Two phones, two alarm screens. One person sets a single alarm for 7:45. The other sets 7:45, 7:46, 7:47, 7:50 and 8:00, which is a strategy rather than an alarm. Sleep experts generally advise against repeated snoozing, but the comic is not judging.
One laptop desktop holds four tidy folders. The other is buried under hundreds of files and screenshots. Most office workers will know immediately which side they are on.
Life explained in charts
A bar chart of time spent: a towering bar for dreading making a phone call, and a tiny one for actually making it. Phone anxiety is a common complaint, especially among people who grew up with texting. The chart sums up how much bigger the dread is than the task.
"My possible response times": half a pie for 0.5 seconds, half for five to seven business days. Anyone who replies instantly to some messages and leaves others for a week will recognise the split.
Where she looks during a video chat: almost the entire pie goes to "at myself", with a sliver for the other person. Researchers who study video calls have described this "mirror" effect as one reason calls can feel tiring. The comic got there with a single pie chart.
When does she unpack her suitcase? A thin sliver says "when I get back home". Everything else says "when I need my suitcase for another trip".
The timeline of an avocado, Monday to Thursday: hard, still hard, ripening, perfect at 3:00 pm, and inedible at 3:01 pm. A crude word in one label is part of the joke. It is one of the most relatable pieces in the collection for anyone who buys avocados.
A month of the calendar filled with "Nope", apart from one circled "Yes!" day on which she does literally everything on her to-do list. It is an honest picture of motivation coming in bursts rather than steady daily progress.
A graph of how much she feels like an adult over time. Confidence peaks in the teenage years, dips at college, then crashes at the first job and wobbles along the "can someone call a real adult?" line through marriage and a first child. It is a neat illustration of the idea that the more you know, the more you realise you do not know.
"Conversations I have with my husband": nearly the whole pie is "look how cute our dog is", leaving small slices for "what time are you getting home" and "what do you want for dinner". Her small dog, who appears in several comics, clearly runs the household.
Expectations versus reality
Plant ownership. In the expectation panel she sits in a flower crown among thriving ferns and cacti; in reality the same plants hang brown and wilted while she screams. Watering too much or too little is the usual suspect when houseplants fail.
The night before, she plans to get up early for the gym. At 5:45 she does not really need to work out. By 6:30 she does not need a shower, and by 7:30 she does not need this job. Every renegotiation happens under a sleep mask with the alarm going off.
Taking pictures on vacation: the expectation is a solo pose in an empty tunnel of vermilion gates; the reality is a crowd of phones, selfie sticks and the back of someone's head. The setting is recognisably the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan, famous for its thousands of torii gates and its crowds.
The closed-mouth smile. In theory it looks elegant and mysterious; in practice it comes out as a strained grimace. Anyone who has tried to change their smile for a photo will understand.
Taking a "short" nap. The plan is to rest her eyes for five minutes. The reality is waking up as an elderly woman with a walking stick, remembering when she was young.
One minute she is surprisingly happy and confident about her life choices. Five minutes later, a flaming meteor labelled "self doubt" is heading straight for her as she scrolls her phone. Comparing yourself with others online is a well-known trigger for that switch.
2:00 am: what she should be doing (sleeping) versus what she does instead, which is lying awake looking up what the entire cast of Home Alone looks like now. The 1990 film's cast lists remain a reliable late-night rabbit hole.
Small daily battles
The waiter offers grated cheese and says "say when". She keeps smiling until the plate of spaghetti disappears under a snowdrift of parmesan. It is a joke about politeness and appetite, and anyone who loves cheese will relate.
"A Christmas miracle": on a holiday flight she silently begs each passenger not to take the seat beside her, watches a parent with a baby walk past, and then hears boarding is complete. She celebrates by stretching across all three seats.
She finds it so hard to drink eight glasses of water a day, yet effortlessly gets through four coffees and four glasses of red wine. The "eight glasses" rule is a rough guide rather than a medical law, as fluid needs vary and food and other drinks count too. If you have specific concerns, talk to a doctor.
"Sustenance, then and now": a curled-up foetus attached to its umbilical cord, and an adult curled up in bed attached to a phone charger. The visual rhyme makes the point without a single word of dialogue.
The biggest lie she tells herself: that she will let the pans soak a little before washing them. The dish soap laughs and the sponge says "see you in a week". Leaving dishes to soak is useful for baked-on food, but it is also the world's most popular excuse.
New Year's Eve. She stands at the party in a sparkly dress and tiara, champagne in hand, while dreaming of the sofa, a pink blanket, a pizza and her dog. Many people secretly prefer a quiet night in, and the comic gives them permission.
Other people's phone galleries contain weddings, sunsets, babies, birthdays and holidays. Hers contains row after row of the same small dog. Any pet owner's camera roll will look familiar.
"Why I'm jealous of turtles, part 1": one tortoise spots two acquaintances, Toby and Jane, mutters a swear word, and simply retreats into its shell until they leave. The joke is about avoiding small talk, something humans cannot do as neatly.
A tiny chip in fresh nail polish, a promise not to peel it, a second promise, and finally ten nails stripped to patches. Picking at chipped polish is close to irresistible, and the four-panel build-up is perfectly timed.
Growing up, nostalgia and the quarter-life crisis
Things that make her feel nostalgic, mostly from a 1990s childhood: Flintstones vitamins, Goosebumps books, Where the Red Fern Grows and Charlotte's Web, the classroom TV cart, a Nokia 3310, a disposable camera, a slap bracelet, the "cool S" doodle and the hunting screen from The Oregon Trail game. She also includes Muzzy, the green monster from the BBC's language-learning cartoon, and the TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark?
The quarter-life crisis checklist: get bangs, buy adult colouring books, sign up for a yoga or silent meditation retreat, hire a life coach, celebrate every time you are asked for ID, develop mysterious stomach aches, feel that nothing is right but nothing is really wrong, and lose all desire to do what you are "supposed" to do. The last item, with a cartoon hand gesture, sums up the whole project.
The term "quarter-life crisis" describes the uncertainty many people feel in their twenties and early thirties about careers, relationships and identity. It is not a medical diagnosis, but if those feelings become persistent low mood or anxiety, talk to a doctor.
Her first coffee of the day, drawn as a parody of the opening of The Sound of Music (1965): she spins on a flowery Alpine meadow under a rainbow in a pinafore dress, cup raised, shouting that her brain is alive. It is a cheerful ending for a collection about everyday struggle.
Why these comics feel so relatable
Hines's comics work because they pick out tiny, specific moments that people rarely talk about but almost everyone has experienced. The avocado window, the snooze strategy, the pile of dog photos: none of these are big problems, and the comics never pretend they are. They simply say, out loud, the things people quietly do.
The formats help. Pie charts and graphs borrow the language of office presentations, so applying them to dishes and naps creates instant contrast. Expectation-versus-reality panels give each joke a clear setup and payoff in two frames. And because her cartoon self is always slightly frazzled but never miserable, the overall tone is warm rather than bitter. Being an adult is hard, but it is also quite funny.
Sources: comics by Clare Kayden Hines on Instagram; artist interview quotes via Artfido and Bored Panda; toilet-roll history via Wikipedia: Toilet paper orientation.
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