How Spring Cleaning Can Help You Lose Weight
Diet Success
March 12, 2012 at 5:05 pm
by Irina Gonzalez
Now that the clocks have turned forward for daylight savings time, the weather seems to be following along to the call of Spring. It’s warm and sunny more often than not these days and, for me, that means spending a lot more time outside.
Although I made sure to keep exercising during winter (I even did a charity run in February!), it will be nice to get to run outside without wearing a ton of layers. But the other thing that comes with the warmer weather is Spring Cleaning.
I’m not a huge fan of cleaning and organizing, but there’s one big thing I look forward to with Spring Cleaning: the calories I burn during these simple clean activities.
We often forget that cleaning and organizing can actually burn calories but with Spring Cleaning being such a big job (who doesn’t spend at least a few hours every weekend doing some heavy cleaning?), there are a lot of calories that you can burn by devoting some much-needed time to making sure your house is in top shape.
In order to inspire myself (and all of you), I looked up some of the calorie counts on basic household chores:
- cleaning (light dusting, straightening up, etc): 170 calories per hour
- cleaning (washing the windows, etc): 204 calories per hour
- moving furniture: 408 calories per hour
- washing floors: 258 calories per hour
- sweeping floors: 224 calories per hour
- vacuuming: 238 calories per hour
- putting things away (like laundry): 204 calories per hour
- clearing things from your yard: 204 calories per hour
The best way to make sure you’re both doing your Spring Cleaning and burning some calories is to do little by little, every day. That’s my plan, at least. Maybe I won’t be burning 400 calories by moving furniture every day, but at least I can burn 200 with just an hour of cleaning and organizing. My house will look better and I’ll feel a little better after the added exercise. It’s a win-win.
How do you plan to burn calories during Spring Cleaning this year?
Irina Gonzalez blogs about healthy slow cooking, nutrition, and weight loss maintenance on her blog The Fit Flexitarian, and here on Momster.com.
