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Dusting, mopping and vacuuming not only keep your house clean, but these activities may also indicate that you keep your body fit as well, Time.com reported.

NiCole Keith, a physical activity expert at Indiana University, studied 998 African American adults between the ages of 49 and 65 living in two urban areas of St. Louis, Mo. Participants kept records of their physical activities, the quality of their neighborhood and the cleanliness of the interior of their home over the course of a 10-year period.

"At the end of the day, the interior condition of their house seemed to be the only thing affecting their physical activity," Keith said. “It is not at all what we expected.”

Previous studies showed that environmental factors like the condition of streets, sidewalks, traffic noise and air quality affected people’s level of physical activity. However, these results, which Keith presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Baltimore, Md., show that they have almost no bearing on a person’s physical fitness.

“If you spend your day dusting, cleaning, doing laundry, you’re active,” said Keith at Wednesday’s meeting, adding that some people, “won’t take 30 minutes to go for a walk, but they’ll take 30 minutes to clean.”

The demographic for Keith’s study, older African Americans, have been underrepresented in studies like these, despite being disproportionately affected by cardiovascular disease and its risk factors, according to the report.

Click here to read more from Time.com.