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Housework Counts as Exercise, Too
Why do we ignore all the movement that is involved in being a human?
Here’s a funny thing I’ve noticed about wealthy people: The more money they make, the more they outsource the fundamental labor of being human to other people. I’m talking cleaning the house, taking care of the garden, buying food and carrying it home, and looking after the animals/pets they choose to own.
In that process, wealthy people aren’t just outsourcing basic tasks, they are outsourcing movement, too. The forms of movement that, for millennia, humans have been basically designed to do: Carrying heavy things, squatting down to pick something up, reaching for those top bathroom tiles that never get properly cleaned.
And what do wealthy people do with all this glorious spare free time? They get in their car and drive to the gym. Or hire a personal trainer. Or join the cult of Peloton. In other words, they eliminate the need for much natural human movement and then pay more money to move in other, more manufactured and aspirational ways.
I think of this weird artifact of modern life often when I’m faced with the question “what do you do for exercise?” Sometimes I’m asked this by the doctor, or friends, or people who are particularly interested in optimizing their lives. I never feel like I have a great answer.
The thing is, years ago, I would have had an impressive answer to that question, one that involved running many miles a week. People would have regarded me as very healthy. But as I got older, the mental punishment that went alongside pushing my body to run miles day in, day out got old. I could no longer be bothered to beat myself up in my head as a means of getting my legs going. In fact, it started to feel pretty unhealthy.
Slowly, and with no shortage of therapy, my attitude towards myself and my body changed. As I began to treat myself with more kindness, I became far less interested in intense forms of exercise, and I got more interested in simply moving more in diverse and natural ways: walking or cycling places instead of driving or taking a bus, spending time in my garden taking care of my plants, doing gentle yoga on my living room floor, and yes, cleaning my house. I can happily do these activities all day…
