In this day and age, most everyone is doing at least a little something to benefit the environment. Whether it is as simple as participating in your town's mandatory recycling program or using environmentally-friendly cleaning products in your home, I bet you are trying to make a difference.

The buzz around green cleaning products is astounding; for years, there have been companies like Seventh Generation spearheading the green cleaning movement, while now we are seeing big chemical companies like Chlorox manufacturing environmentally friendly cleaners.

So this is all good, right? Some would say that this is still big business looking to make a buck, even though the environment and your health thanks you for using products like this. Why? Because there is a simple fabric that cleans and removes bacteria with only water. No chemicals or other solutions are needed. And it is probably right under your bottom.

I'm writing of microfiber, which is probably what your couch is made of, but what your cleaning cloths should be. An article in Businessweek attempts to uncover why microfiber isn't marketed as the successful cleaner that it is (tested, it came out a winner). The conclusion? Well, go read the amazing details in the article yourself, but in a nutshell, America loves its cleaners and marketing has only strengthened the perception that cleaning solutions are needed to make things really clean.

I, for one, and going to try cleaning with microfiber to see how I like it. Can you imagine the money saved by cleaning your house with only microfiber? I am curious to see how it works on my granite countertops -- lovely, but oh so troublesome to clean.

How about you? Will you try foregoing the cleaning solutions and test microfiber's effectiveness in your house?