Canadians--milk in bags?

We have milk jugs:

When I moved to Toronto for a bit, I had the hardest time figuring it out. I literally was looking for the milk, found a bag, opened it, found more bags. I thought maybe the bag of milk had a false bottom so I actually tried to balance the bag on the floor in the store and that didn't work.

I ended up buying like 8 pint containers of milk. When I went into work in the new office, I opened the fridge to put my lunch away and saw the bag in the pitcher.

I had no clue

The photo shows you exactly how my milk is stored. I do nothing to reseal it. Now we do go through our milk fairly quickly but I have never had milk get *stale* because of being open. And unless there is something really stinky in my fridge (like limberger cheese) the milk does not pick up any flavour/smell.

The pitchers are usually for sale in around the milk cooler. The pitcher is a specific shape and size to hold the bag in place when you are pouring. When we converted to metric we had to get new pitchers to accommodate the new size and bag shape.

It wasn't, I didn't even notice the kid in the picture! I replaced it with a more generic pic

I use a small clothes pin to close the bag.  Fold over the opening & put on the clothes pin. The cut is quite small.

Bags are great as the milk in the other bags stays fresh.  Wash out the bags & they are great to stuff in them & the food saver will seal them & they are easy to stack in the freezer. 

I grew up with an open jug/pitcher of milk that went from the fridge to the table three times a day. When it was emptied, a new pitcher was filled and the empty one washed. There was always an open jug in the fridge and we never had a problem with it not being fresh. 

We had bagged milk for a few years but, once we went back to plastic containers, we went back to an open pitcher for table use.

Kwik Trip (midwestern) convenience stores used to sell milk in bags. We had them growing up in Minnesota. Not sure if they still do.

I live in upstate NY but my mom was from Montreal. Our family would go visit my grandparents a couple times a year. I remember thinking how different it was that Granny's milk was in a bag. (We had boring paper cartons at home.) She had hers in the plastic pitcher as well. This brings back fond memories of those trips.

I just have it in a pitcher like above, and then I have a narrow plastic container that holds three bags of milk that goes in the fridge. We go through it quickly. I never thought about the bag being open with no lid.

I always thought the jugs are so large. Is it not difficult for kids to pour milk out of the gallon jugs?

I know people who freeze milk too, the bags make it easy to stack.

It's a bit of a challenge for my kindergartner to pour his own milk if the gallon is full. He really grabs onto it and sticks out his tongue to concentrate. It's pretty cute---as long as he doesn't spill it all over! Most of the time if it is full he asks someone else to help him, though.

With DS #1 we didn't use milk fast enough to ever buy a gallon jug, so he had no issues. Half-gallons are far easier to deal with.

The gallon jugs are horrible... I don't think you can get them here in Ontario. I hate them. My mom loathes them. She'll only buy 1 litre containers, I buy in 2 litres. She does it because it's lighter, I do it because I'm weird about milk and I don't want it sitting around for long periods (not that it takes us long to use, but since we're not milk drinkers a little goes a long way.

I would get the milk in bags but then it becomes a storage issue.

And freezing milk is just wrong. And gross. Unless you're making ice cream. 

This lady used to come into the store I worked in and would buy 8  2 litre jugs at a time. She had 3 boys. I asked her why didn't she just buy 4  4 litres it would be a bit cheaper and less containers? She said because when they kids spill a jug of milk then they can only spill 2 litres or less!