Get Your Exercise While Doing Housework

For years it has been said that if you are going to exercise, you must do it 'properly'. 'Proper exercise' is exercise in its traditional form - sit-ups, aerobic routines, jogging. Moving around a lot while doing housework all day, or doing yard work supposedly does not count as 'proper exercise'.

I beg to differ.

First of all, it must be said that movement in any form is better than no movement at all. Duh. In fact, I would be much better off to take a trip or two upstairs and back down than I am sitting here at the computer. Does that not just make sense? And if I make those trips upstairs carrying some extra weight - laundry, or what have you, all the better. I am now doing stairs carrying weights.

Housework is absolutely full of exercise. There is simple walking, of course. There are squats - I am constantly squatting to pick stuff magazines off the floor, or abandoned plates, or the scattered laundry debris from my daughter. I work my arm muscles when I wash the dishes, or fold laundry, or make the beds. I lean and I stretch all day long.

As for yard work being good exercise? Once again, there is the squatting - you can not weed those flower beds if you do not squat. Pushing the lawnmower is certainly exercise, thus the sweating. Using a riding lawn mower? Not so much exercise. Shoveling snow is another good one. If that isn't exercise, I do not know what is.