I bought a head of romaine, told myself I would eat salad all week, and threw half of it out seven days later. That cycle repeated for months. Then I watched a produce manager prep greens at the store and realized my mistake: I was storing lettuce the way it arrived, wet and sealed.

Wet lettuce rots, dry lettuce lasts

Lettuce leaves are mostly water and they bruise easily. When you stash a wet head in a plastic bag, the trapped moisture turns into a breeding ground for slime. The fix is boring but effective: get the leaves dry before they go in the fridge.

I wash the whole head, spin it or pat it dry, then wrap it in a dry kitchen towel before putting it in a loosely closed bag or container. The towel catches the leftover moisture. When the towel feels damp, I swap in a dry one. That one habit doubled how long my lettuce lasts.

Storage that keeps it crisp

Two setups have worked well for me:

• The towel wrap: dry leaves, roll them in a clean towel, tuck into a container with the lid slightly open. Good for a head you are working through.
• The crisper drawer hack: line the drawer with paper towels and lay the greens in loose, not packed. Replace the paper towels every few days.

Keep lettuce away from the back of the fridge, where it can freeze, and away from apples and pears, which give off gas that makes greens go brown faster. I learned the fruit thing when a bag of spinach next to my apples turned to mush in two days.

What my fridge looks like now

I still buy one head a week, but now I use all of it. The last romaine lasted nine days and the leaves were still snapping when I finished it. Same lettuce, same fridge, different handling.

Dry it, wrap it, and stop sealing the moisture in with it. That is the whole system.