Dancing, playing, and even doing house chores count towards your daily recommended minutes of exercise.
While household chores may not replace a structured workout, they provide functional exercise that mimics daily movements, helping to improve strength, flexibility, and balance.
Clean Up, Burn Calories
You can burn calories when you do chores around the house or in the yard. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, includes energy you burn doing anything except sleeping, eating, or exercise. House or yard work can boost your metabolism and help manage your weight.
Routine Activity: Incorporating housework into your daily routine can help you stay active without needing a dedicated workout session. While housework may not replace structured exercise completely, it can contribute to your overall physical activity levels and health.
Lower Calorie Burn – Along with the first point of activity level, there is a tendency for us to overestimate the number of calories that are burned while doing housework. Unfortunately, while calories are burned, it is not nearly enough to make up for calories that would be burned during more traditional exercise.
Study finds they're just as effective as going to the gym
Researchers discovered that people enjoyed the same health benefits whether going to the gym, walking to work or doing household chores. Does just thinking about stepping inside a gym make you feel exhausted? If so, here's some good news.
Cleaning windows and surfaces: Do big arm circles until the muscles start to burn. Be sure to use both arms. This works on windows, shower doors, or counter tops. Scrubbing the floor: Scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees gives you more of a work out than mopping.
According to experts, about an hour of intensive cleaning could be roughly equivalent to a 20-minute low-impact workout. Activities like scrubbing, vacuuming, and lifting all demand energy, similar to what you'd expend in bodyweight workouts.
Light housework included washing up, dusting, making the bed, hanging out the washing, ironing, tidying up, and cooking. Heavy housework was defined as window cleaning, changing the bed, vacuuming, washing the floor, and activities such as painting/decorating.
Walking, dancing, household chores. They may not be called 'exercise' but all movement counts toward your daily physical activity.
Washing and drying clothes: Bending, lifting, and moving around while doing laundry can burn 100-200 calories per hour. 6. Cleaning bathrooms: Scrubbing, wiping, and disinfecting bathrooms provide a full-body workout, burning 150-300 calories per hour.
Housework is physically tiring. A lot of time is spent on household chores.
While doing housework will absolutely count as physical activity every time you do it – regardless of whether it's a bathtub scrub or a quick kitchen refresh – it's the intensity level that will determine if it counts as exercise, says Aimee Victoria Long, PT and founder of Omni Wellness.
A 45-minute walk, particularly at a brisk pace, can burn approximately 150–200 calories, making it an excellent option for steady-state cardio. Unlike spot jogging, walking is easier on the joints, which makes it suitable for people of all age groups, including seniors or those recovering from injuries.
This simple 1,200-calorie meal plan is specially tailored to help you feel energized and satisfied while eating fewer calories so you can lose a healthy 1 to 2 pounds per week.
Everything from changing the sheets to carrying a vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs burns calories and works muscles. According to Healthline, a website dedicated to health and wellness information, vacuuming for a half-hour burns around 80 calories for an average 175-pound person.
Break down your housework into categories (rooms/areas in your house) and then break them down again into the smaller, physical chores. Make a schedule/to do list of the different areas, with each chore underneath. When you tick off each chore, give yourself a small reward!
Folding Laundry
According to the Calorie Control Council, doing laundry and folding clothes for one hour can burn approximately 136 calories. To make the most of this activity, consider doing squats while you fold towels or propping up your legs and doing crunches while you fold socks.
Is house cleaning exercise? Yes, cleaning the house is exercise! From sweeping to scrubbing dishes to dusting, all that moving around is definitely burning calories. Of course, not all forms of cleaning and exercise are created equal.
But let me ask you this – have you ever considered that shopping might be a legitimate addition to your weekly exercise routine? I'm serious – hours of walking around the shops can clock up a huge amount of steps, and you can even burn up to 200 calories doing so!