I don't always feel like exercising when I'm down in the dumps. But I know it's good for me and whenever I force myself into physical activity, I always cheer up. I usually turn to running when I want to banish my blues. But according to a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, mopping my floor may be enough to boost my mood.

As little as 20 minutes a week of any sort of physical activity can help alleviate psychological distress, say researchers from University College London. While vigorous activity has the most effect, you can still enjoy an emotional lift with minimal effort. Clean the house, work in the garden, or walk around the block, and you could enjoy a 41% lower risk of feeling blah.

Personally, I subscribe to a pretty active fitness routine for overall health and happiness, but it's good to know I can bust out of my bad mood with a little light housecleaning.

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If you find that some days make it hard to get in that run, walk or treadmill routine, try a good dose of housework instead and lose a chunk of calories anyway.

According to this source, regular cleaning activities like washing dishes and mopping the floor (among others) burned about 50,000 calories per year. Wow!

In other words, standard household chores are equivalent to walking more than 22 miles each and every year. It's something we have to do anyway, so instead of having the spouse or kids (or housecleaner) clean that house, do it yourself and get some calorie burning in there.

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A new study of more than 200,000 women suggests that doing household chores like dusting, mopping and vacuuming was significantly more cancer protective than playing sports, or having a physical job.

While it's long been known that physical exercise lowers the risk of breast cancer -- most likely due to the resultant hormonal and metabolic changes -- housework is the only physical activity that's been shown to have positive effects on both pre- and post-menopausal women.

This isn't to say that there's something inherently cancer protective about the act of mopping itself, but rather that moderate physical activity, like housework, may be more effective in reducing a woman's risk of breast cancer than more rigorous, but less frequent exercise.

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