organizing for school- school landing zone

My big kids have been back in school for about 2 1/2 weeks.  I feel like I almost have our schedule and routine down.  It's been an adjustment because I am spending so much time in the car dropping off and picking up my kids from school.  When my littlest starts pre-school (MDO) next week, all 3 of my kids will be in 3 different schools.  Crazy!  One thing that has really helped is to be organized and have a school landing zone. I'm still working out all of the kinks but for the most part this is working!


Inside our back door is our landing zone.  


As soon as my kids get home from school, they sit on the cutest chippy bench to take their shoes off and put them in the basket. 


Then they hang their back packs and jackets on their hook. It took some gentle (and not so gentle) reminders on my part to get them into the routine of putting their things away.  But they do it on their own now.  I'm so happy that we don't have to run all over the house in the morning searching for books, backpacks and shoes. 


My littlest can't quite reach his hook so I added a temporary hook down lower on the wall so he can hang his backpack by himself.


We have this chalkboard wall in our little hallway leading to our garage. 


This is where I put all of our schedules, lunch menus, school calendars etc.  


I also added some inspirational words.  :)


I think it's just fun and maybe puts a smile on everyone's face before they leave for the day.


Since the door to our garage is metal, I can use magnets to put reminder notes on it. Right now it only has a few things but usually band notices, birthday party invitations, school open house reminders and things like that can be found here.  

I'm sure I'll be tweaking things here and there as our needs change, but hopefully we are starting our school year off right!!

What do you do to help organize for school?