Cleaning Cupboard Basket: Save $23 at Aldi

The cleaning cupboard isn't glamorous. Nobody's excited about buying bleach and garbage bags. But those 12 items add up fast, and depending on where you shop, you could be paying anywhere from $43.30 to $146.05 for the exact same basket. That gap is too big to ignore.

What the full basket actually costs at each store

Here's the full picture for a cleaning and laundry cupboard basket covering 12 everyday items:

• Aldi: $43.30
• Woolworths: $59.60
• Coles: $66.71
• IGA: $146.05

Aldi is $16.30 cheaper than Woolies and $23.41 cheaper than Coles. That's real money, not rounding errors. And IGA? At $146.05 it's in a different stratosphere entirely, reflecting the premium that independent convenience pricing can carry. If you're doing a dedicated cleaning stock-up, IGA is almost never the answer.

The cherry-pick basket, where you buy each item at its cheapest store regardless, comes in at $33.62, saving you $9.68 compared to just going to Aldi for everything. Whether that saving justifies two or three extra stops is the real question, and we'll get to that.

Where Aldi absolutely dominates

Four items in this basket are significantly cheaper at Aldi, and they're the bulky staples you burn through fastest.

Laundry liquid (2 L) is $1.99 at Aldi. Coles and Woolies charge considerably more for branded options, and even their own-brand laundry liquids rarely touch that price point for a 2 L bottle. Over a year, a family doing five loads a week might buy this eight or nine times. That's a meaningful saving on one item alone.

Toilet paper (24 pack) is $3.79 at Aldi. This is the item that gets the most airtime on Australian Reddit threads about grocery costs, and with good reason. Branded 24-packs at Coles and Woolies regularly sit at $7, $9, so Aldi's price is less than half in many direct comparisons.

Multipurpose spray (500 ml) comes in at $1.85 at Aldi, and garbage bags (50 pack) at $2.29. Both are solid products that most shoppers find perfectly adequate for everyday use. These are the kinds of items where brand loyalty rarely survives a side-by-side comparison.

Where Woolworths or Coles is actually cheapest

A few items in this basket break Aldi's streak, and the honest answer is that the gaps are small.

Dishwasher tablets (40 pack), Woolworths has these at $4.00, which is the cheapest in the basket. Dishwasher tablets are one category where Aldi's range can vary, and the Woolies price here is genuinely competitive.

Paper towels (6 pack) at $1.90 and dish sponges (5 pack) at $1.80 are both cheapest at Woolworths. Toilet cleaner (750 ml) is also $2.20 at Woolies.

At Coles, fabric softener (1 L) leads at $2.60 and tissues (224 pack) at $1.90.

None of these differences are dramatic. We're talking cents on individual items. But they do add up to that $9.68 cherry-pick saving across the full basket.

The one IGA outlier worth knowing

Bleach (1.25 L) is actually cheapest at IGA at $2.00. That's a surprising result given IGA's basket total is so much higher everywhere else. It's probably a specific own-brand or private label product rather than a category-wide pricing win. If you happen to shop at IGA regularly, it's worth grabbing bleach there. If you'd be making a special trip, don't bother.

Is the cherry-pick trip worth it?

The cherry-pick basket is $33.62 versus $43.30 at Aldi. The saving is $9.68.

Here's the honest take: probably not worth it for most households.

You'd need to visit at least three stores to capture most of that saving, Aldi for the bulk of the basket, Woolworths for dishwasher tablets, sponges, paper towels and toilet cleaner, and Coles for fabric softener and tissues. That's time, fuel, and mental energy for under $10 on a basket you're only buying every six to eight weeks anyway.

If you're already doing a split shop, say, Aldi for your weekly groceries and Woolies for meat or produce, then grabbing the Woolies-cheapest items from this list makes good sense. You're not making an extra trip, you're just being strategic with what goes in the trolley at each stop.

The cherry-pick is most worth it for larger households who buy these items more frequently, or for people who bulk-buy and spend $80, $100 on this category in one go. At twice the basket size, the saving doubles to nearly $20.

Who should shop where

Budget-first households and families: Do the full basket at Aldi. You'll pay $43.30, get perfectly functional products, and save a significant amount compared to every other single-store option. Aldi's cleaning and laundry range has improved steadily, and the store-brand equivalents on laundry liquid, toilet paper and spray cleaner in particular are well-regarded by shoppers.

People already shopping at Woolworths: Your $59.60 total is reasonable. You're not getting Aldi prices, but you're not paying Coles prices either. Add the dishwasher tablets, sponges, paper towels and toilet cleaner to your regular Woolies shop and you'll have the cheapest-available versions of those items without any extra effort.

Coles loyalists: The $66.71 total is the second-worst single-store option in this basket. Fabric softener and tissues are genuinely cheapest at Coles, but if you're doing a full stock-up, you're paying a $7 premium over Woolies and a $23 premium over Aldi for essentially the same products.

Retirees and single-person households: This basket lasts much longer when you're shopping for one or two people. The per-unit savings at Aldi still apply, but the frequency of purchase drops. A quarterly Aldi run for cleaning supplies makes a lot of sense, you stock up, spend $43 or so, and don't think about it again until autumn.