Tips for green spring cleaning
06:11 PM PDT on Tuesday, April 22, 2008
SHORELINE, Wash. - With the arrival of spring, the Brock family's fancy turns to spring cleaning.
With the help of King County Eco-Consumer Tom Watson, they made some eco-friendly cleaning decisions.
They started by cleaning the cabinets.
"Down here there's some drain cleaner and this is really pretty toxic," Watson said.
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In the playroom they cleared the old, cluttered closet that daughter Maddie calls the "closet of doom."
They also sacrificed 80s-era stereo equipment and other stuff from the garage and Maddie's backyard playhouse. They stacked it all up in the garage and boxed it.
Watson advised them on what to do with the waste.
First stop was the Aurora Household Haz-Waste site, where the Brocks got rid of their unused pesticides and other chemicals.
Next the electronics were taken to Seattle's InterConnection, where staffers will rebuild, for free, or recycle, for a small fee, computer equipment. And they will wipe clean all the Brocks' personal hard drive information.
"There's a lot of people working in there refurbishing computers and what they get is a free computer for donating their time," said Eric Brock.
Next, the contents of the "closet of doom" are loaded into the family car and are on their way to people who could really use them.
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The Brocks plan to restock their cabinets with non-toxic, natural and organic products.
"And we're donating the clothes to St. Vincent's and other places, so it's really a clean sweep for the Brock Family," Watson said.
The Brocks will have less to clean next year after they restock their cabinets with effective, non-toxic, natural and organic products.
"Yeah it was totally worth it. I mean we didn't know where a lot of these places were, to drop off the hazardous materials and now we do and now it will be easier the second time," said Denise Brock.
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