Burn Calories Cleaning

You are probably thinking I am a little crazy.  I just promoted June as the "Great Outdoors Month."  Why would I encourage you to stay inside and clean?  Well,  as much as I would like to stay outside all day, there is cleaning to be done.  Uggggg.  It is bad enough to have to clean your own house but cleaning after a bunch of college boys is not glamorous in the least. The next thing you are thinking is, "Why is she cleaning her 22-year-old son's apartment?"  We had some friends ask us if their son could stay here in Utah while he attended a basketball camp.  We volunteered our son and his apartment because it seemed like it made perfect sense for the visitor to stay right by campus.  That rational came into question when we dropped by to visit Marcus.  OH MY!  I secretly convinced myself that my son was too busy with practice and school work to maintain his apartment.  (Do you believe that one?)  It wasn't that bad.  They pick up their garbage.  It is just a struggle to take it out.  There were 5 full garbage sacks tucked behind the couch.  Hmmmmm.   I didn't think the kitchen was too bad.   There were hardly any dirty dishes.  I asked Marcus where all the dishes were and he signaled me down the hall.  In his roommate's bedroom there were several boxes.  Marcus opened one and ABRACADABRA-there appeared all the dirty dishes.  His roomies thought that if they hid all the dirty dishes they might pass the cleaning inspection.  They thought wrong.  I saw their cleaning report card in the kitchen.  All "F's"   Ugggggggg again.

This is one of the boxes of dirty dishes

Where does fitness come in?  I seriously got my workout in cleaning that apartment.  I wanted to let you know that you can burn some serious calories when you tidy up.  Check out the chart below to see your calorie burning potential.  You can also use calories calculators found online to help calculate how busy you have been.  I will share a link to a calculator  http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php  but there are many out there.

These statistics from www.Caloriesperhour.com are for a 150-pound, 35-year-old woman doing 30 solid minutes of everyday chores around the house. Plus, to help you burn even more calories, here are a few other activities to give you a really beneficial in-home workout.

Type of housework	METs (metabolic equivalent total)	Calories burned per half-hour	Add light calesthenics (119 cal.)	Add disco dancing (153 cal.)	Add jogging in place (272 cal.)
Doing laundry	2	73	192	226	345
Making the bed	2	68	187	221	340
Cooking	2	85	204	238	357
Washing the dishes	2.3	78	197	231	350
Ironing	2.3	78	197	231	350
Dusting	2.5	85	204	238	357
Sweeping	3.3	112	231	265	384
Vacuuming	3.5	119	238	272	391
Scrubbing the floors	3.8	129	248	282	401
Rearranging furniture	6	204	323	357	476
Yard work	5	170	289	323	442
Washing windows	3	102	221	255	374
Washing the car	3	102	221	255	374
Gardening	4	136	255	289	408
Mowing the lawn	5.5	187	306	340	459
Raking	4.3	146	265	299	418
Shoveling snow	6	204	323	357	476
Carrying a small child (up to 15 lbs.) up and down stairs	7.5	289	408	442	561