Cleaning Can Burn Just As Many Calories As Going To The Gym!
While cleaning can be a job, it can also be seen as a workout for those who don’t have enough time to go to the gym or who don’t exactly know what to do at the gym. Essentially you can burn 100 calories for every hour you clean depending on your weight. Have a look at the article listed below to see exactly how loading the dishes, cleaning your bathroom could help you exercise the amount of time you want too.
How Many Calories Do You Burn While Cleaning Your House?
Work runs late, kids have soccer practices, and household chores need to get finished sometime. Sitting at your desk for an extra hour won’t burn off calories, but thankfully, helping out with housecleaning will. Of course, the number of calories you burn will depend on your weight (heavier people burn calories faster) and potentially your height. It will also depend on the intensity with which you scrub your floors and bathtub. But no matter what, you’ll burn a decent amount of calories if you’re giving your home a deep clean.
Cleaning the bathroom & Vacuuming
Soap scum might be your enemy in the bathroom, but it’s your friend in terms of getting a decent workout while cleaning it off your shower or bathtub. Scrubbing the bath for 30 minutes burns an estimated 200 calories, FitDay reports. Scrubbing the entire bathroom for 35 minutes from top to bottom will burn about as many calories as walking on a treadmill for the same amount of time, according to Health. Vacuuming will give you a cleaner home while you’re getting a workout.
Pushing your vacuum around will not only give you cleaner carpets, but it can also burn between 50 and 119 calories per 30 minutes of activity, Health, FitDay, and Shape report. Clearly, this depends on how long you’re vacuuming and how hard you’re working to push the vacuum around your floors.
If you wash your dishes by hand, you’ll burn about 160 calories.
Other chores
You can expend 130 calories over 30 minutes of making beds in your home, burn 70 calories while ironing clothes for 30 minutes, and use 100 calories to rearrange your furniture for 25 minutes. Because it tends to be a little more vigorous, outdoor work like gardening, mowing the lawn, and other things on your to-do list can also take the place of a gym workout for a day or two. If you’re serious about getting a workout while you tidy up your home, Kellow suggests planning strategically to get the most out of your chores. When you polish your furniture, for example, use the wax polish in a tin instead of a spray. You’ll have to rub much harder and longer to get the shine you want, but you’ll burn more calories in the process. When you’re ironing, keep the laundry basket on the floor so you need to bend and stretch for each item of clothing. And finally, complete your tasks in an order that will keep you going up and down the stairs as much as possible. “Empty the dishwasher in the kitchen, then make the bed upstairs, then vacuum the living room downstairs, then clean the bathroom upstairs — and so on,” Kellow writes.
Not only will you have made your home sparkling clean, you’ll also have burned off some calories along the way. Two birds, one stone.