If you commute to an office and prefer to eat something fresh for lunch, you can't go wrong with a homemade salad. (Plus, have you seen the price of popular takeout salads recently? Yikes!) But bringing along a salad has its risks. While transporting the salad itself is easy enough, hauling around a small tub of dressing comes with some clear drawbacks. The last thing you want is for the container to open up in your lunch bag.

We all know that pre-dressing salad makes it go soggy. However, one little trick can free you from the need to separately transport your dressing. It all comes down to the way you pile your salad into the container. Rather than putting the dressing on top, drizzle it on the bottom of your tub, then place the densest and hardest ingredients (like beans or chickpeas) in the base, stacking items up in the reverse order of weight so that the lightest things are at the top. Having the weightiest items on the bottom has multiple benefits. These ingredients won't soak up all the dressing while the salad sits and they also won't wilt or bruise the more delicate foods like the salad greens.