Whenever you raise your heart rate for 20 minutes or more, you are exercising! If working out at the gym doesn’t appeal to you, there are plenty of things that you can do that count as exercise. Some might surprise you:  Taking care of your garden counts as exercise. Consider all the squatting, bending, reaching, and lifting you do, not to mention walking back and forth to haul clippings out, reel the hose in, and put everything away. Many housecleaning activities can count as exercise, like sweeping or mopping the floor. This can really get your heart rate up, depending on how much floor you have to clean. If you first sweep and then mop your floor, you’ll get even more exercise, and all while doing something you needed to do anyway.Painting a room takes a lot of work, especially at the beginning when you need to wash the walls. But the entire process can get your heart rate up, from all the bending and reaching involved in pre-taping through rolling on the paint and cleaning up afterward. Playing with your kids, no matter what their age, can be good exercise. If you get outside with them, you’ll have a lot of fun options that also provide a good workout. Smaller kids love to run and play hide-and-seek and other games involving movement, and older kids can go on a bike ride or hike with their parents.Speaking of hiking, geocaching is another way to get moving, especially if you choose caches that are more difficult to get to. Geocaching is a fun pastime that involves hidden treasure, a GPS, and lots of walking, hiking, or biking. Yard work can also give you excellent exercise. All summer, you need to mow the lawn regularly to keep up with it. Pushing a mower, even if it’s a self-propelled machine, uses energy and can really get you to break a sweat. In the fall, there’s leaf raking and bagging to keep you busy, and in the winter, there is shoveling to be done. These tasks that need to be done anyway are also good ways to exercise, so you can check a chore off your list and get a workout in too.If you can walk or bike to work, a friend’s house, the grocery store, or anywhere else, do. You have to go anyway, you can save wear and tear on your automobile, and you can get a great workout.  Exercise is all about movement. Many of your everyday tasks already involve healthy movement. You can easily get the exercise you need without once stepping into a crowded gym.