Kitchen Lifesaver - Ready-Made Salads

On weeknights, we sometimes have problems getting dinner on the table at a decent time. Sometimes one or both of us work later than usual and we found ourselves eating at 8:30 or even 9. Because of that, on nights that we are home early and have some time, we make salads ahead of time. It works for us because we often eat salads with dinner and having the first course ready helps us get the main part of the meal done faster.
 

It's pretty straight forward. We chop up all the lettuce with a lettuce knife (no metal knives hear kids - it turns the salad ends brown) and wash and dry it using a salad spinner. Then we place it in a container with paper towels on the top and bottom. We can use this up to a week usually without it going bad. This alone saves us a ton of time.

Also, if we have salad one night, and know we are going to be eating salad the next night, we'll portion out bowls for the second night as well. Making four salads really takes no more time than two, but to bring out all the veggies again and chop the small portion up the second time can really be time consuming. So, we take 4 bowls, fill them with the pre-washed, pre-chopped lettuce and then add the toppings that will keep well overnight, like cucumbers, olives, mushrooms, and peppers to all four salads. Then, we place plastic wrap over two of them and place them in the fridge.

We'll then top the two salads for that night with the things that don't keep as well, like avocados and feta. We add these things to the day two salad on the night we eat them, since they don't keep well. It's a great time saver, and while I would prefer a freshly prepared salad, I like doing this because it allows us to have salads on days when we wouldn't have time to prepare one. What are some time saving tricks that you do to make your meals come together easier/faster?