Out of everything above, I find the salad spinner to be indispensable! We get LOTS of greens with our CSA--especially right now. So, the first thing I do is wash and spin all green and store then in the fridge. Otherwise, I'd be way to lazy to do it during the week. The other salad tool I find useful are those reusable produce bags--they let the lettuce breath a little more and keeps them fresh.

I'd love to have a salad spinner, but they are huge, right? Are there any that take up just a tiny bit of storage space?

btw - I'm loving salad week.

Yeah, also agree with the salad spinner. For years I never had one, and I never made salad at home because I hated washing greens--getting one has completely changed that. I also find it really handy to wash leeks--slice first, then give them a couple rounds of rinse and spin.

Lazy_Lurker, I have an Oxo one that I love that's not too big, which is handy as there's only two of us (it might not be big enough for a whole family). I store it nested inside my other mixing bowls, so it doesn't take any extra space--and often I use it to store the washed greens in the fridge (it comes with a separate flat lid, although the spinner part works fine as a lid too).

Lazy Lurker - Somewhere (maybe on AT?) I read you can "spin" salad by washing, spreading in a thin layer on a clean dish towel, rolling it, putting it in a bag, and swinging around in a circle. Here is a video of someone doing it. The video doesn't roll it up in a towel but really i find thats the best way. You still need a bit of open space in your house to do this tho!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uZwEQQae8M

I have done this and it works fairly well. Most of the time I buy pre-washed greens at the store.

@Lazy_Lurker - I also have an OXO salad spinner, they make them in two sizes, I have the smaller one. It's great for the two of us in my house. I can spin enough greens for four servings of side salad or two dinner salads. I usually spin more greens than I need that day and then store the extras in the spinner in the fridge. When it's empty I keep it nested in my mixing bowls like Brooklynnina said. Definitely worth the space it takes up. Knowing I have already cleaned and dried lettuce waiting in the fridge makes me much more likely to throw together a salad at the last minute.

@lazy_lurker - You can buy an OXO "Mini Salad Spinner" through target.com or at a Target store. http://www.target.com/p/mini-salad-spinner/-/A-516266

@lazy_lurker - Walmart has a collapsable salad spinner that make it stackable with other cabinet items and takes up much less space. I got one for my wife and she loves it.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Progressive-Collapsible-Salad-Spinner/13330632

Salad spinners are great for other things, too. I give canned beans a spin after I rinse them to dry them faster. If you line the inside with paper towels, you can do the same with quinoa after rinsing it. For some reason, I find that people always forget you can use it to dry herbs, too.

@LAZY_LURKER, the lid is the annoying part to store because there's a large central spindle, but otherwise, you can stack the bowl and spinner with other bowls or containers. Mine nests inside a couple of serving bowls that are about the same size, and some smaller plastic prep bowls live inside it. I cram the lid in wherever there's room :-P

re: citrus juicer.

I've always been loyal to the lowly reamer. Much more flexible as far as working with different sized citrus, and can get you into all the nooks and crannies.

Zyliss used to make a spinner with a cord that you'd pull, like starting a lawn mower. I got mine on Ebay and I prefer it to the current models, which I've used at other people's houses.

Living in an RV, I'm tight on space. I decided that the huge salad spinner was a frivolity and out it went. Big mistake. I stopped eating lettuce because it was impossible to get it dry! A friend was decluttering for a garage sale and I snagged a slightly smaller spinner from her. It doesn't have a spindle, so I can store small Tupperware containers and the like in the spinner.

I have a long time interest in salad. One of the things I find so compelling is that salad is widely believed to be the healthy choice, but if you are not making your own salad and your own dressing, a salad is one of the worst choices you can make. You are more likely to get food poisoning from a commercial salad bar than any other way. Foods included in salad are very often low nutrition and are nearly guaranteed to have a higher sodium content than anything else on a menu. Commercial salad dressings have off the charts sodium content because they contain emulsifiers and deflocculants which are sodium based chemicals. Many of the ingredients are highly processed including the lettuce leaves as they pre-cut which depletes nutritional value quickly, and they are washed in a variety chemicals to prevent spoilage and hang on to crispness. This is often true of pre-washed salad bags in grocery stores as well. Many pre-made salads contain as much meat as the "unhealthy" choices like a burger, but the meat in a salad is more likely to be heavily salted and otherwise processed--think ham versus ground beef. And then there is the sugar added--think dried cranberries and salad dressing. Even if you are eating a house-made dressing, it may not contain the chemistry set of unpronounceable chemicals., but think about this--you are literally dumping a few tablespoons of fat, sugar and salt onto your meal. And most of our lettuce greens are the weaklings of leafy greens in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good salad and eat them all the time. Some nutrients are more easily absorbed from the greens with a dab of healthy fat in the mix--think avocado, nuts, or olive oil. But salads are tricky bitches that can really undermine the best of intentions.

I got rid of my salad spinner due to space. Now, I put my rinsed greens in a pillowcase (an old one - lower thread count/thinner material will let more water through) and swing it in a circle (like described above) on my patio/balcony. When I bring it back inside, I just turn the pillowcase inside out into a bowl. The pillowcase is a lot easier to find space for!

I buy a large container of organic salad mix from Costco which I don't wash..so far, i haven't gotten sick. =)

I use the pillowcase method for spinning my greens. Works like a charm.

I was just thinking last night that I could not function without my salad spinner! I usually make and pack several days worth of salads for lunch at a time.... I can't imagine how gross they'd get if I wasn't able to get everything nice and dry before I pack them up!

I have this salad spinner from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/7fcjgz7 and I LOVE it. I thought a salad spinner was completely useless until I got this.

It's small, but I think you can get enough spun for two people pretty quickly. I've actually used the drainer inside on its own quite often too. It fits nicely in my small studio apartment kitchen. It fits in my pots and pans cabinet.

lazy_lurker I'd recommend looking at ikea for a cheap (but good) salad spinner. Mine is a year old and I think I paid about $3. Its a bit smaller than other salad spinners and works really well.

Thank you all - I will soon have a salad spinner and hope to eat more salad!

I love my big stainless steel bowl to toss the salad in. For some reason that makes a big difference to me.

But salad spinners are TOPS!

I don't have any of those other things. I wonder if I'm missing out on the dressing mixer though.

I have a collapsible Martha Stewart salad spinner that looks exactly like that Progressive one. But it doesn't have any kind of spindle in the middle; so it just stores pretty much flat. And it's such a lovely shade of blue...

Because I am an idiot ... I was makind dip for a party and put a thawed out package of the frozen spinach (the one that comes in the square box) into the salad spinner.
Learn from my fail!

*making