Making lemonade from your family’s crumbs and dust!
Tired of your virtual workouts via Zoom? Inclement weather keeping you from your daily bike ride? Is your house a complete pigpen with everyone home and underfoot? Can’t let your cleaning people in the house due to isolation? Are you eating a fourth meal when you’re stuck with insomnia between 10:30 PM and 2:00 AM?
It might not be as exciting as watching our favorite fitness instructors turned Zoom and InstagramTV stars, but it is satisfying to know that your house is sparkling clean and you can do it on your own time, like when you can’t sleep because you watched the news. Well, perhaps not the vacuuming.
Daily Housekeeping Calorie Burn, right here:
Carrying groceries or laundry up the stairs: 440 cal / hr
Scrubbing bathroom (tile, tub, shower): 400 cal / hr
Washing your car: 314 cal / hr
Spring cleaning your windows: 231 cal / hr
Mopping or sweeping floors: 156 cal / hr
Vacuuming: 140 cal / hr
Dusting: 140 cal / hr
Wiping down surfaces: 136 cal / hr
Ironing: 80 cal / hr
Making beds: 65 cal / hr
Washing dishes: 65 cal / hr
Please note that these numbers are estimates, culled from FitDay, MyFitnessPal, Health, and Livestrong, and are based upon a 150-lb person doing an hour of each activity with vigor, which is unlikely for some of these activities unless you have a family of 15+ people.
Based on our calculations, the average 150 lb person with a normal-sized house and family can burn 85-100 calories in 30 minutes if they really put some elbow grease into it. Wearing ankle weights might help you burn an additional 100 calories, but this does increase your risk of an injury, so user beware.
If you’d like some structure to your workout, VeryWellFit.com has a specific housekeeping workout here.
Get cleaning, friends!
