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About this tool
Calories burned washing dishes by method, minutes and load, with weekly and yearly totals from compendium MET values.
This calculator works out how many calories washing up costs, using the metabolic-equivalent formula kcal/min = MET x 3.5 x kg / 200 with the published MET values for dishwashing: 1.8 METs standing at the sink, 2.5 METs when you are also clearing the table, and 3.3 METs for general moderate kitchen work such as scrubbing pots. It then projects a single wash out to a day, a week and a full year so a small repeated task is visible at the scale it actually happens. Both the gross figure and the net figure above resting metabolism are shown.
Open Dishwashing Calorie Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Standing washing, clearing while walking, heavy scrubbing and dishwasher loading are priced separately rather than lumped together.
A 30-kcal task looks trivial until you multiply it by 730 washes — the yearly total makes that visible.
Subtracting resting metabolism shows the part actually attributable to the chore.
About 2.2 kcal a minute for a 70 kg adult standing at the sink, so roughly 33 kcal for a 15-minute wash and 132 kcal an hour. Washing dishes is listed at 1.8 METs in the compendium of physical activities, rising to 3.3 METs if you are moving around cooking and cleaning at the same time.
No. Moderate-intensity activity starts at 3.0 METs, and standing at the sink is only 1.8 METs, so it counts as light activity. It still contributes to total daily energy expenditure and to breaking up sitting time, which matters independently of formal exercise.
Marginally, and mostly because it takes longer. Hand washing at 1.8 METs for 15 minutes burns about 33 kcal for a 70 kg adult, while loading a dishwasher is closer to a 2.5 MET clearing-and-walking task but usually lasts only 5 to 10 minutes, so the totals come out similar.
Using the classic 7,700 kcal per kilogram of body fat, and a net burn of about 29 kcal a day from two 15-minute washes at 70 kg, it would take around 260 days. That rule of thumb ignores metabolic adaptation and appetite changes, so treat it as a scale illustration and not a weight-loss plan.
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