Homechores values: Anyone know?

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zannatagged
zannatagged Posts: 27 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I spend a lot of time doing vacuuming and mopping and pretty hard cleaning for my elderly parents. I don't have any kind of tracking equipment unfortunately as I'm financially up the creek at the moment and full time caregiver here. Was wondering if anyone has any figures on what calories are burned for household chores since the app doesn't seem to list any :) any help would be greatly appreciated ;)
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  • zannatagged
    zannatagged Posts: 27 Member
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    Normally I would agree, barring the fact that most of you won't be changing beds twice a day, nor mopping spills twice a day or bathrooms from accidents etc. I'd kill to go back my full time stress filled aviation job with a couple of hours of house work and dinner for the family lol :)
  • zannatagged
    zannatagged Posts: 27 Member
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    However, I will take on board the suggestion and redo the activity level. Due to my own physical disabilities I marked it low. Thanks for that as I've only just started and quite clueless so far
  • zannatagged
    zannatagged Posts: 27 Member
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    And yet billiards is an excercise.... I found that kinda funny lol.
  • rainbowbow
    rainbowbow Posts: 7,490 Member
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    zannatagged wrote: »
    And yet billiards is an excercise.... I found that kinda funny lol.

    it's not something people are doing every day. it's an extra activity.

    for reference my boyfriend walks 18-20,000 steps playing billiards for a couple hours.
  • zannatagged
    zannatagged Posts: 27 Member
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    I played professional billiards for 10 years. I'll just leave it at that but I'm really glad your honey is getting good excercise at the game. Lol
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,051 Member
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    zannatagged wrote: »
    And yet billiards is an excercise.... I found that kinda funny lol.

    Well, people can add any exercise they want. You can go to calorielab.com and there are all kinds of different housekeeping chores with a calorie "burn" amount.

    The problem with accounting for each and every house chore is that individually you can end up racking up (no pun intended) too many exercise calories. Changing your Activity Level will cover all of them without over-counting.

    Pick a moderate or active Activity Level. Use it along with logging your food. Be consistent and in a month you will have numbers to work with. All the activities and exercises are starting points. Your own data is your guide.
  • zannatagged
    zannatagged Posts: 27 Member
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    Which is all I was asking. If anyone had some general burn figures on household chores love. I understand everyone uses the app differently and on days where there is excess stuff not ordinary to the day, I would like to have those numbers to hand. I get the change the activity etc but on a day where disaster strikes that won't help. Support team suggested I come here as someone would likely have those numbers but, I think maybe I'll try the internet. Thanks all for input. Hope y'all have a lovely weekend. God Bless and good health.
  • HeliumIsNoble
    HeliumIsNoble Posts: 1,213 Member
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    zannatagged wrote: »
    Which is all I was asking. If anyone had some general burn figures on household chores love. I understand everyone uses the app differently and on days where there is excess stuff not ordinary to the day, I would like to have those numbers to hand. I get the change the activity etc but on a day where disaster strikes that won't help. Support team suggested I come here as someone would likely have those numbers but, I think maybe I'll try the internet. Thanks all for input. Hope y'all have a lovely weekend. God Bless and good health.
    Just in case you don't already know this trick. Make the bed up with a waterproof mattress protector at the base as usual. Then put another mattress protector over the top, and another fitted sheet on that.

    Then next time the sheets are soiled, just whip them off to reveal the clean set underneath that you put on earlier.

    It's a great time saver when you have to calm down and clean someone in any amount of distress after a soiling incident.

    If you already do this, my apologies.
  • perkymommy
    perkymommy Posts: 1,642 Member
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    If you have a cell phone then you can track your steps on there or even get a free app to do that. That way you know how much you are getting in each day at least. When I used to work as a nurse assistant I was walking close to 20,000 steps in 8 hours on shift. It was amazing the exercise I got!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,584 Member
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    zannatagged wrote: »
    Which is all I was asking. If anyone had some general burn figures on household chores love. I understand everyone uses the app differently and on days where there is excess stuff not ordinary to the day, I would like to have those numbers to hand. I get the change the activity etc but on a day where disaster strikes that won't help. Support team suggested I come here as someone would likely have those numbers but, I think maybe I'll try the internet. Thanks all for input. Hope y'all have a lovely weekend. God Bless and good health.

    It seems odd that the support team would send you here: There are entries in the standard MFP exercise database for three levels of cleaning (light to heavy), plus gardening, cooking, lawn mowing, moving household items, and a few more specialized ones.

    I agree with others that if your daily routine includes these chores as, essentially, your work, it would probably be most effective and efficient to bump up your activity level setting, try that for a while, then adjust as needed. If you do something well beyond your ordinary (like raking the lawn for a long time, or an afternoon packing up things and storing them in the basement), you can always log that as additional exercise.
  • Fuzzipeg
    Fuzzipeg Posts: 2,298 Member
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    I just looked on the exercise page. What the heck have they done!!!! Its not good!

    Back when my health was compromised I used to log housework. Things which were out of my usual activity and its gone. I really loved the gardening enteries too, you could really see the effort being rewarded, though I usually put that down as walking for however long, getting down to the deep digging was beyond me.

    I should have looked up, "walking with a dog moderate pace" too, moderate pace is available to all.

    Hope you find a good solution to your predicament. Not all changes on here are helpful. Exasperated.

    I wonder if I can find my own records so I could use them again had I wanted to!!!
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,051 Member
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    Fuzzipeg wrote: »
    I just looked on the exercise page. What the heck have they done!!!! Its not good!

    Back when my health was compromised I used to log housework. Things which were out of my usual activity and its gone. I really loved the gardening enteries too, you could really see the effort being rewarded, though I usually put that down as walking for however long, getting down to the deep digging was beyond me.

    I should have looked up, "walking with a dog moderate pace" too, moderate pace is available to all.

    Hope you find a good solution to your predicament. Not all changes on here are helpful. Exasperated.

    I wonder if I can find my own records so I could use them again had I wanted to!!!

    The user entered (ones I've entered or used already) exercise list sometimes doesn't show up for me the first time I go to the Exercise tab. Go back again...sometimes just refreshing will fix it. Your stuff is still there - it's a tech glitch.
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    There are two entries in the Exercise Diary that provide estimates. Search for the word "clean" and log either one to get an estimate.

    Cleaning, light, moderate effort
    Cleaning, heavy, vigorous effort

    If the two items do not initially come up using the mobile app, use the website to search for "clean" and log each one separately. Those two items should then sync to the mobile app and be in your recent Exercise List.

    Note that neither of the items contain the words "house," "home," or "chore." A search on those words would not return a match.

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