Total calories burned doing household chores

Make housework your workout

It's no secret, doing household chores – no matter how much we don't enjoy them, really does burn calories. In fact, it burns a lot.

That's excellent news for those of us who need to clean the house on Saturday morning but are too tired (or lazy) to fit in a workout or head to the gym for the rest of the weekend.

Let's see how much we're really burning off every week...

Scrubbing the bath

You can burn off 200 calories by scrubbing the bath for 30 minutes. I don't know about you, but my bath isn't that dirty. Let's cut that down to about 10 minutes... that's still 67 calories – gone!

Carrying shopping bags

Shed 190 calories by simply carrying around evenly-weighted bags in each hand for 30 minutes. Even if you could only manage 10 minutes, that's still 63 calories you've lost.

Washing the car

Washing, scrubbing, shining... in 30 minutes you'll lose 143 calories.

Vacuuming carpets

Half an hour of vacuuming burns about 90 calories.

Making the bed

Spend 30 minutes making the beds in the house and lose 130 calories,

Ironing

Not only will you lose 70 calories by doing half-an-hour of ironing, you'll also be working and toning your arm muscles!

Dusting

Even by simply dusting here and there for 30 minutes, you'll still be shedding 50 calories.

If you enjoyed reading this article, you might also like to read: How to stay slim this braai season

1. Prev:Shave extra calories every day... Effortlessly!
2. Next:Protein shakes and weight loss