How Your Household Chores Become Your Housework Exercise Regimen

We all need motivation to pick up the mop or vacuum and starting cleaning the house, right? To be honest, you can think of countless other things to do than cleaning the home in the evening after work or God forbid, on the weekend.

Would you like a little motivation?

What if you discovered you were burning a significant amount of calories during this household chores workout? Sure, while no one will fool housework exercise with HIIT or boot camp and you shouldn’t completely abandon your workout regimen, you’ll be surprised at how many calories you burn cleaning your home.

Well, how many calories does cleaning burn?

We recently examined an article at Good Housekeeping and Calorie Lab and came away with this housework infographic to detail the energy you’re expending as you're using household chores as exercises.

Vacuuming

Embark on a cleaning adventure with your trusty Dyson, guiding it through every corner of your home. Consider this: if a person of average build spends 132 minutes vacuuming their entire house, they burn approximately 176 calories in an hour. This translates to a total of 387 calories burned each week through this household chore. So, the next time you notice dust bunnies lurking in the corners, view it as an opportunity to work towards your fitness goals. Cleaning not only keeps your living space tidy but also aids in burning calories, making it a dual-purpose activity.

Doing Laundry

This one shocked us. If you factor in loading, unloading, folding and ironing into the equation, the average laundry session will burn 700 calories! Whoa! This doesn’t even include the obstacle course of carrying your laundry down or up your stairs while avoiding tripping over the kids’ toys on the floor. Indeed, household chores like cleaning do burn calories, and it's fascinating to see how an everyday task like doing the laundry contributes to this.

Cooking and Preparing Food

Dinner time! With the usual dinner preparation of chopping, peeling, retrieving, et al, you’ve burned 100+ calories to create your gourmet feast! If you’re doing this throughout the entire week it equals to burning 700+ calories. This makes a little more room to now eat your favorite meals and leave a little room for dessert! Don't forget about the cleanup after the meal either. Post-meal activities like washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen will also help you burn more calories. It's a win-win situation where you not only get to savor delicious food but also keep those "calories burned cleaning" high, making meal preparation and cleanup an unexpectedly effective way to stay active and healthy.

Decluttering

Sorting the garbage/recycling and putting away your kids’ toys are yeoman’s work. These decluttering tasks seem to rear their ugly head every day in some capacity. But, you can expect to burn through 240 calories in your daily decluttering; a similar amount to an evening walk around the block. This calorie burn is particularly notable if you have more than two children. So, while you're ensuring a clean and organized home, you're also engaging in a beneficial physical activity that helps in burning calories.

Mopping

We’re all tired of mopping up our kids’ spills from breakfast, lunch and dinner but it does come with the benefit of torching 405 calories throughout the week. For this reason, it’s another great addition to the workout you get from cleaning your house. So, the next time you find yourself with a mop and bucket in hand, remember that you're not just cleaning up - you're also engaging in a calorie-burning exercise. Embrace this dual benefit and make your household chores part of your fitness regime!

Cleaning Windows

While it may not sculpt Arnold like arms like bicep curls can, cleaning the windows can give you a serious arm and shoulder workout! When considering the calories burned cleaning, it's noteworthy that engaging in window scrubbing activities can lead to an expenditure of about 231 calories per hour.

Who knew you could expend so much energy using household chores as exercise? Sure, it’s tough to get yourself motivated to do these regular chores but once finished you’ll be the beneficiary of a cleaner house and an active lifestyle.

How many calories does cleaning burn? A lot. Feel free to share this infographic of housework exercises to your followers, but don't forget to give Goodhouse Keeping and Bin There Dump That credit.

We'd love to see your progress, use the hashtags #ChoreThatBurnThis and #Fit4Residential and tag us on Instagram @binthere.dumpthat

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How Many Calories Does Cleaning Burn?

With so many ways to clean, you’ll be happy to know there’s just as many ways you can burn calories. If you add all of the above methods, you’re looking at a total of roughly 4,100 calories burned per week! And if you want to burn more calories, adding an extra 20 minutes to your cleaning routine each day can significantly increase the number of calories burned each week. There are plenty of other methods we didn’t even discuss, like mowing the lawn or washing the car!

Don’t forget that it’s not all about how many calories you burn; rest is just as important. Spacing out your chores throughout the week is a great way to balance a healthy lifestyle. So remember do drink plenty of water, put on your sweats, and get to ready to burn more calories while you clean the house.