Cleaning & Laundry Basket: Save $36 by Shopping Smart

Cleaning and laundry products are genuinely unglamorous. Nobody's excited to buy garbage bags or toilet cleaner. But they're also non-negotiable, you buy them every few weeks whether you feel like it or not, which means the price difference between stores adds up fast over a year.

We priced a 12-item cleaning and laundry cupboard basket across Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, and IGA. The gap between the cheapest and most expensive single-store shop is $126.25. That's not a typo.

What the cleaning basket costs at each store

Woolworths wins the single-store shop at $47.50. Coles comes in at $71.85, a $24.35 premium for no obvious reason on this particular basket. Aldi lands at $87.14, but that figure includes a note: one item in the basket wasn't available at Aldi, so you'd need a second stop anyway if Aldi's your base.

IGA sits at $173.75, which is more than three times the Woolies total. That's not a fair comparison for most shoppers, IGA pricing reflects smaller-format, often independently run stores, but if IGA is genuinely your only local option, this basket tells you exactly what that convenience costs.

The cherry-pick total (buying each item at whichever store has it cheapest) comes to $35.11. That's $12.39 less than the Woolies total and $36.74 less than Coles.

Where the cheapest cleaning products actually are

Aldi takes six of the twelve items on price. That's a majority, and a few of the wins are sharp.

Laundry liquid (2 L) is $1.99 at Aldi. That's the kind of price that makes you stop and check if you read it wrong. Canstar's recent cleaning product analysis confirmed Aldi's own-brand laundry range competes well against name brands, and CHOICE testing has flagged Aldi's laundry products as strong performers for the price. So you're not sacrificing quality to save a few dollars here.

Dishwashing liquid (1 L) is $1.39 at Aldi. The multipurpose spray is $1.85. Garbage bags (50 pack) are $2.29. Toilet paper (24 pack) is $3.79. Tissues (224 pack) round out the Aldi wins at $1.89. On these six items, Aldi is consistently the cheapest by a clear margin.

Woolies picks up four items. Dishwasher tablets (40 pack) are $4.00, the cheapest available anywhere. Bleach (1.25 L) is $2.00 at Woolies, paper towels (6 pack) are $2.20, and dish sponges (5 pack) are $1.80.

Coles gets two: fabric softener (1 L) at $2.60, and toilet cleaner (750 ml) at $2.20. Neither difference is massive, but they're both cheaper than the same items at Woolies.

Where prices are close enough not to bother

Not every item has a dramatic price gap. Paper towels and toilet cleaner are within small margins across Coles and Woolies. Dish sponges and bleach are both inexpensive at either store, if you're already at Coles, the extra trip to Woolies for $2.00 bleach versus a slightly higher Coles price probably isn't worth the petrol.

The items where the splits genuinely matter are the bulkier ones: laundry liquid, dishwasher tablets, toilet paper, and garbage bags. These have the most variation and get used in volume, so the per-unit difference stacks up over time.

Is the cherry-pick worth an extra trip?

Honest answer: sometimes, but not always. Saving $12.39 over Woolies is real money, over a year of monthly cleaning restocks, that's roughly $150 saved. But that saving assumes you're splitting between Aldi and Woolies (and possibly Coles), which means two shops on the same run.

If Aldi and Woolies are close together, or you're already passing both, the split absolutely makes sense. You're loading up on Aldi's laundry liquid, dishwashing liquid, toilet paper, multipurpose spray, garbage bags, and tissues, then popping into Woolies for dishwasher tablets, bleach, dish sponges, and paper towels. Two stops, same trip, $12 back in your pocket on a basket that only totals $47.

If they're not on the same route, the cherry-pick math gets murkier. Extra fuel, extra time, extra friction. For a $12 saving on a basket you only buy monthly, the single-store Woolies shop at $47.50 is a genuinely decent outcome.

Who should shop where on this basket

Woolies is the clear default for anyone running a single-store shop. It's $24 cheaper than Coles on this basket, and the price wins are spread across enough items that there's no obvious category where Coles pulls ahead enough to matter.

Aldi plus Woolies is the split to beat if you're trying to run the cheapest cupboard possible. Aldi takes the bulk of the items and the bulkier items. Woolies fills the gaps. Just keep a list in your phone, cleaning cupboard restocks are easy to forget when you're mid-shop.

Coles shoppers aren't getting a bad deal if they're already in-store for the weekly food shop. The $24 premium hurts on paper, but if your groceries total several hundred dollars and you're stocking up on cleaning products at the same time, the convenience may be worth the gap. But if you're making a dedicated cleaning run to Coles and not Woolies, that's harder to justify.

IGA is for emergencies. If you've run out of bin bags on a Tuesday night and IGA is the only place open, that's what it's there for. At $173.75 for this basket, it's not a price-competitive option for a planned shop.

With minimum wages rising to $948 a week from July 2025 but household costs still absorbing most of that, the $36 difference between shopping smart and shopping on autopilot matters. The cleaning cupboard is one of those places where the price gap between stores is wide enough, and the products generic enough, that loyalty to a single store genuinely costs you.