If you want your house to be clean and organized, then you would need to do various chores like sweeping the floors, gardening, cooking, washing dishes, etc. While chores are usually unpleasant, they are necessary in order for the house to remain as safe and as comfortable as possible for you and your family or housemates.
After doing plenty of chores in a single day, you will notice that your feet feel sore and painful. Foot pain is fairly normal for people that do tasks that require them to walk, run, or move in different directions. Fortunately, there are ways for us to avoid and treat foot pain during and after chores. Here are the best ways to avoid foot pain while doing chores.
Take Time to Relax First Before Doing Chores
Before you do any chore at home, it is important to take a little bit of time to relax and unwind, as constantly thinking about the chores that you will do for the day can just give you stress. The stress that you feel can just make your muscles tense up, and once they are stiff, they have a higher chance of becoming painful and sore. So, don’t stress yourself out during the day, and take time to relax before doing any chores.
You may also want to use a foot massager first before you start with your tasks. To know about what options are available, check out our article about the Types of Foot Massagers.
Wear Comfortable and Supportive Shoes
Since you will be using your feet a lot while doing chores, you might as well wear shoes that provide comfort, support, and protection for your feet. With comfortable shoes, your feet will feel less pain whenever you are walking or moving around the house. You have the option to use the shoes that you usually wear for work, school, or exercise, but it would be better to wear cleaner shoes so that you won’t leave any stains or residue caused by dirty shoes on the floor or carpets you will be cleaning.
Wear Knee Pads
If you are going to do chores where you would need to crouch or kneel on hard surfaces or floors, then it is better for you to wear knee pads to protect your knees from wounds or injuries. By wearing knee pads, you would also provide cushioning and impact protection for your knees.
Having painful knees can also affect the feet. With knee pain, the knees may not be able to properly support the feet, and the lack of support can then put too much weight and pressure on the lower legs and ankles, thus leading to foot pain. To avoid knee pain and subsequent foot pain, you should wear knee pads while doing chores.
Perform Stretches
Stretching can help your muscles warm up before doing intensive tasks like picking up heavy items, reaching for high ceilings, and crouching to clean narrow spaces. Without a proper warm-up, your muscles will most likely hurt much faster, as they will suddenly go from a relaxed state to a tense state.
Before doing chores, you should perform proper stretching exercises that include stretching your arms and legs. Stretches can also help your legs and feet feel less stiff and more flexible, which can help in reducing or avoiding foot pain.
Take a Break Every Now and Then
Doing multiple chores without taking breaks will definitely cause a lot of pain not only in your feet but also in other parts of your body. So, in order to avoid pains and aches, you should take a break every now and then. While taking a break, you should sit or lie down for a few minutes to let your legs and feet recover.
Keep Yourself Hydrated
Besides taking a break, you should also keep yourself hydrated by drinking water every now and then. Whenever we are doing a lot of chores, becoming sweaty is pretty much inevitable, as sweating prevents our body from overheating while performing intensive tasks or activities. However, it is essential for us to replenish the lost water in our body due to sweating, and if we don’t drink a lot of water after sweating so much, we will become dehydrated.
So, have a bottle or glass of water ready for you to drink while you are doing chores. But it would be better if you have a flask or a large container of drinking water ready so that you don’t have to go back to the kitchen every now and then just to get water to drink.
Learn How to Properly Lift Heavy Objects
There are some chores where you would need to lift heavy objects like appliances, containers, cabinets, etc. What a lot of people do whenever they lift heavy objects on the ground is to bend down while their legs are straight. This lifting position is wrong and shouldn’t be done, as it would cause strain not only in your back but also your legs and feet.
In order to protect your legs and feet from pain and injuries, you should learn how to properly lift heavy objects. The proper lifting position requires you to squat down while bending your legs. Then, you would need to have a firm grip on the object using your hands and arms while also straightening your legs back up to lift the object. With this proper weight lifting position, you don’t have to bend down anymore and cause too much pressure in your back and legs.
Have a Foot Bath Afterwards
Once you are done with all the chores for the day, you can have a nice foot bath that can help in reducing the pain and soreness that your feet may feel. Even though you have followed all of the tips we have provided above, foot pain is sometimes inevitable. However, the tips we have stated can help in reducing foot pain, and if you are still feeling pain in your feet, then you should get a foot bath.
The foot bath may simply be a bucket of cold water. The cold water can help alleviate pain while also reducing the redness and soreness in specific areas of the feet. If you want, you can also add soap to the water and scrub your feet using a pumice stone or foot brush so that you will be able to get rid of dirt and grime that got stuck to your feet while you are doing chores.
Use a Foot Massager
In addition to a foot bath, you may also want to use a foot massager that can apply pressure to painful areas of your feet and cure your foot pain. There are many kinds of foot massagers that you can buy online and in physical wellness stores, but one of the best is the electric foot massager, which automatically provides a great massager for your feet while you are sitting on a comfortable chair. With a nice foot bath and an effective foot massager, your feet will surely feel relaxed and painless even after doing different chores for hours.
And these are just some of the best tips we can provide so that you can avoid or treat foot pain while doing chores. Foot pain, as we have stated previously, can sometimes be unavoidable, but by following the tips and tricks we have offered, the foot pain wouldn’t be severe and would be gone in just a few hours.
You can read our Guide to Selecting Foot Massagers for tips on how to find the best one for your needs.