I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it one way or another, but I don’t really feel physically exhausted or sore after housework, so I guess I wouldn’t consider it exercise? For me at least, I don’t mean to say anyone is wrong for thinking otherwise.
I dunno, I sweep, mop, clean the bathroom, do the dishes, all the normal housework stuff - it’s definitely more strenuous than not doing anything, but in my mind there’s a place between sitting and exercise which is where housework kinda falls. Though the linked article also includes some yardwork like raking, weeding and mowing the lawn, which definitely feel more like exercise to me.
Everything burns calories, even breathing. That doesn’t make it exercise. The only things on that list that could count are shoveling snow, moving furniture, and gardening, depending on what you are doing.
These kind of articles are dangerous and misleading. There is no amount of house work that is going to give you a healthy heart.
I have a dog and vacuum almost daily, it’s not exercise compared to taking him on a 2 mile walk that takes the same amount of time.
I find this train of thoughts void of a very important variable: there’s no single type of homework and while some might be definitely positive for health, both mental and physical, others are the opposite of that.
For example, gardening vs painting walls with a toxic fungicidal paint. Housework? Housework!
The amount of calories I have burnt in the last year doing housework is surely less than the calories I burnt on a single 10 mile trek on my peloton tread. Clearly others are doing a lot more than I am if it rises to the level of exercise.
As anyone who does any actual housework can attest: Yes, housework burns a lot of calories. Which is one of the reasons why artificial exercise equipment at home - outside of specific sports use because you’re a professional - makes so little sense, you could burn more or equal amounts of calories just finally cleaning up, and both need extrinsic motivation as you’re too lazy to use them otherwise.
(Yes I know, you’re in this text and you don’t like it. Me neither :P )
Cleaning large areas or intensive scrubbing is definitely tiring. Vacuum or mop the whole house, or scrub the tub to remove soap scum - it will raise the heart rate and can make the arms tired.
Yeah that’s kinda what I meant, I should have been more explicit. If you have a house, even just the daily cleaning and sorting, taken together, is quite a bit. A proper cleaning you do once a week or so if you do it in one session gets you pretty exhausted. And people rarely recognize it as such, plus of course we rarely do it in one session.
I only started noticing after my ex moved out and I established Saturday morning as the time I do all the weekly cleaning up, all in one go.
I think you understand, maybe others have not had the same experience, and I should have perhaps asked people if they have done or do housework and have “felt the burn” from it or not
artificial exercise equipment at home
This was also what I was reasoning lately, that I would try to “exercise” and do “chores” and it was kind of overwhelming, so maybe I could just skip the “exercise” and get more chores done, which is a win win on saving time not “exercising” and getting exercise from the physical chores or work. I’ve sometimes felt like gyms are a “scam”, in that there’s probably some kind of practical manual labor “work” that could be done as “exercise” instead that produces something.
housework burns a lot of calories
I guess I should have added more clarity. There may be a few reasons why people don’t recognize housework as “exercise”.
Firstly, the word “housework” is a bit unclear. Maybe I consider more broadly things to be “housework” while some people are envisioning something simpler like baking which may seem to be pretty inactive if you’re just moving some light ingredients around.
Another issue is everyone’s living space may be different; for example, people with stairs might burn more calories going up and down them versus people on a flat level or with elevators.
Maybe some people move slowly, where they might be able to move faster, or lift less weight when they might be able to load themselves with more for a greater workout at once, or maybe they don’t do as much when they could add more chores to their routine.
Some of the tasks include:
cleaning, which might involve walking around to mop or scrubbing (which feels like an intense workout of muscles).
moving things around, like groceries, trash, machines like vacuum cleaners, laundry, furniture, children, etc.
moving up and down stairs, which burn about double the calories versus walking (this may depend on people’s environment)
walking around in general which can involve a lot of steps
making things, or like weeding, working with manual tools, and so on
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