If the last time you tackled your house from top to bottom was during a spring clean, it’s now around six months since you’ve given your home a deep-clean. It’s scary just how fast time can fly, but it’s also worrying how much dust and dirt can build up during that time. The start of the new autumn season is a good time to clean your home thoroughly once again.
If you can’t face the thought of it and are ready to spend all your free time curled up with a hot water bottle, call in a professional cleaning company. But if you’re prepared to give your house a good going-over, you could find yourself burning a significant number of calories at the same time. According to recent research carried out by the Good Housekeeping Institute, you can burn as many as 600 calories while giving your home a thorough clean – that’s more than you’d burn on the average five-kilometre run.
How cleaning burns calories?
Reaching into corners, moving furniture out of the way and going up and down the stairs while you’re cleaning are all tasks that you might not ordinarily class as exercise, but they’re all working different muscles and helping to increase your heart rate, burning calories as a result. We’ve all got busy lives, so it’s great when you’re able to incorporate exercise into your day without having to go out of your way to the gym, and spring/autumn cleaning is a brilliant way to fit it in. There are a few jobs that you’re likely to find yourself putting off for longer as they can seem like hard work, but as Good Housekeeping Institute cleaning expert Verity Mann said: “The good news is that you’ll be getting fit while you’re doing them.”
Which chores burn the most calories?
To find out which domestic chores burn the highest amount of calories, Good Housekeeping gave five cleaners activity trackers to wear while they each completed a different task. Dusting was found to be the chore that could help you to lose the most weight, burning 194 calories during a 40-minute session. All of the lifting furniture and standing on tiptoes to reach tricky corners that it involves certainly pays off. The next best cleaning task for burning calories was cleaning the windows; you only need to spend 20 minutes making your windows sparkling to burn off 115 calories.
Mopping came in third place, with our tester burning 107 calories during the 20 minutes she spent going over her floors. This was closely followed by cleaning the bathroom – one of the nation’s most despised and dreaded tasks – which saw 100 calories burned in just 20 minutes. For those who hate this chore, knowing it has this added benefit should make it a little more appealing! Finally, vacuuming was found to burn off 86 calories during a 20-minute session. Of course, some vacuum cleaners are significantly heavier than others, so you could find yourself burning even more calories depending on the model that you have and how often you’re carrying it up and down the stairs.