Tone up with the housework workout

6. Clean to the beat
Put on some high-energy music when tidying or cleaning, and coordinate your movements with the beat. Or spend the first five minutes dancing around to warm up before getting down to work. Have another five-minute dance once you have finished, making your movements slower and smaller as you cool down.

7. Squat pick-up
Picking up toys or laundry from the floor is a great excuse to work your thighs and buttocks. Stand with feet hip-width apart with the objects within arm's reach. Inhale; and as you exhale pull in your tummy muscles, then bend at the knees and hips, squatting low enough to pick up the item easily. Inhale as you come back to standing. Squat for each item. If your children scatter the floor with toys daily you'll notice a difference in your shape in a couple of weeks.

8. Start a family chore list
To get the whole household active, draw up a chore list that assigns tasks. Make sure everyone gets a good mix of duties: carrying heavy garbage cans, scrubbing the bathtub, raking the yard, washing windows, turning mattresses, and mowing the lawn count as high intensity; washing the dishes, putting away dishes, and setting the table count as moderate.

9. Be mindful
Practitioners of Eastern exercise systems, such as t'ai chi or yoga, teach that the energy that fires us up emanates from the hara, a well of energy sited around the navel. As you do housework, imagine each movement starting in this core part of the body and radiating out to your extremities, and visualize your breath fanning a flame of motivating energy here.

10. Wear massage sandals
Take a cool-down stroll wearing massage sandals after a housework session; allow the tiny fingers on the footbed to massage away aches and to promote circulation – this will help oxygenate all your cells and carry away toxins. Reflexologists teach that as you stimulate points on the soles of the feet you enhance the well-being of other parts of the body. The heels – where you land before transferring your weight forward – relate to the pelvis, buttocks, and sciatic nerve.

11. Arm workout
If you have loose rugs, clean them the old-fashioned way with a carpet beater or big stick. This exercises first your chest muscles and the biceps, then the muscles in your shoulders and the triceps at the back of your arms.
• Throw the rug over a clothesline, the higher the line, the better. For extra security as you beat, attach clothespins to keep it in place.
• Standing sideways on, with your left shoulder next to the rug and holding the beater in your right hand, swing your shoulders to beat the rug.
• After two minutes, change direction and beat "backhand". Move to the back of the rug, place the beater in your left hand, and repeat.

Read more:
• 17 ways to get active outside
• Spring cleaning made easy
• Photo gallery: How to jump start your metabolism

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Excerpted from 1,001 Ways to Get in Shape, copyright 2009 by Susannah Marriott. Used by permission of Dorling Kindersley. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.