Something that I have always envied of my mom was her ability to be so... ORGANIZED! I mean, my brain DOES NOT work that way. Now I know that there are certain personalities that tend to be more tidy than others but it is also a learned skill that, as a woman, I admire.
My mom reflects the attitude expressed in Proverbs 31 through the way she takes care of her home. Proverbs 31:27 says: “She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.” This is always a convicting verse for me because I very much enjoy "taking it easy" and "letting things slide!" However, there are many benefits to keeping a clean home. Today, I want to focus on calories burned doing chores. (Hey, it's called houseWORK for a reason!)
It is amazing to me how much people are willing to pay just to burn calories. According to Diet Blog: "gyms are a $700 million industry, and it’s estimated that 12% of the population regularly attend the gym." Gyms as we know them today did not even exist before the 1950's. (Diet Blog) Part of the reason for that is because of the work ethic of the generations preceding us.
New York Daily News wrote an article titled: "Lack of housework for modern women might be contributing to obesity," which I consider extremely plausible. For example: "In 1965, the average women spent nearly 26 hours per week on chores like cooking, cleaning and doing the dishes. Women today allot about half that time for chores." Now, there are obviously MANY other factors that contribute to obesity in the United States, but I would say that this is definitely one of them!
This article piqued my interest as to how many calories one might actually burn doing common household chores. So I did some research (also a little math - ugh!) and created this chart of calories burned per 15 minutes of housework, broken up into categories:
To burn 400 calories, a 150 pound person would need to jog for 1 hour, run for 30 min (at 7.5 min/mile), bike for 1 hour, step aerobics for 45 minutes, general aerobics for 1 hour and 15 minutes, ballet/jazz/tap for 1 hour and a half, or walking (at 4 miles/hour) for 1 and a half hours. (Calorielab)
Wouldn't you much rather kill two birds with one stone and do housework to burn calories? Not only will your house look, smell, and feel beautiful - you will be burning a few extra calories to boot!
Now, I am writing this mainly to motivate MYSELF to do housework. My number one skill is sleeping, with lounging and puttering coming in at a close second. Third would be... well, I think you get the point: I am a very lazy person and I rather enjoy being lazy. I like to think of myself as a "free spirit." For example, when I walk in the door from work: shoes go to one corner of the living room, my backpack goes to another, and on and on until I finally make it to the couch where I lounge for a few minutes before doing anything. But in the midst of my "lounging" the other day, I was reading a post from Young Wife's Guide called "Managing your Home for God's Glory," when this stopped me dead in my tracks:
"A cluttered home is truly a sign of a cluttered mind."
While I would usually buck at that statement and insist that mess does not bother me - being the "free spirit" that I am - I realized that my mind is often too cluttered for me to remember how to form a sentence properly in English, much less remember anything important! So, I have made it my goal to make my home a more relaxing and creative space by organizing and cleaning.
Part of my purpose for writing this article is to break things down into manageable chunks as well as have fun! I am very easily bored, so if a task is too repetitive or menial - I usually avoid it altogether. But looking at housework as a means of burning calories - now that is a challenge! Not only do I try to do the work faster so I can burn the most calories possible, but 15 minutes of dishes is a lot easier for me to bite off than "do all the dishes until they are done!" Even though I will end up doing all of them anyway because, "why not? I've come this far!" And 15 minutes of folding clothes is a lot more plausible than doing ALL OF THE LAUNDRY IN THE HOUSE! So, I basically just need to trick myself into doing more housework by thinking of them as mini-workouts!
What ways do you motivate yourself to clean/organize/kick butt around the house? Let me know in the comments below. I am not an organized person so if you have any tips/routines you would like to share... PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!
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