If boredom is holding you back from doing more around the home, consider the health benefits you’re also missing out on.
A new study found that doing more everyday household chores can burn almost as many calories as a jog or spin class.
The UK-based home improvement service Plentific rounded up how many calories you burn each hour from doing the following chores based on an adult’s weight of 68kg.
1. Cleaning
For light cleaning jobs like dusting or hanging up clothes, you can burn 171 calories in an hour. So if you add in some more strenuous cleaning methods like hovering, you can burn even more. The amount of calories burned cleaning are therefore equivalent to almost four jaffa cakes.
2. Sweeping
Brushing away the dust on the kitchen floor or leaves outside on the patio for one hour can result in 269 calories being burned, meaning just 30 minutes of sweeping will burn 135 calories – almost as much as a can of coke.
3. Gardening
If you stay sun-smart in Australia’s scorching summer, putting on your gloves and getting your fingers green can also have amazing health benefits. Plentific estimates the calorie burn to be 339 per hour. Similarly, pushing around a lawn mower for an hour burns 376 calories – more than two bottles of an ice cold lager.
4. Painting a room
If a New Year’s resolution was to freshen up the home with some redecorating, you’ll be pleased to know it burns 306 calories. If this is a longer job, which it very often is, and takes four hours that is 1200 calories burned on painting walls- the same as two Big Macs.
5. Moving furniture
While re-organising the furniture in your home is often an arduous task, the benefits, in addition to rejuvenating the feng shui, are evident by burning 408 calories. Therefore, one hour of furniture moving is similar to playing 50 minutes of tennis.
