Getting kids out the door to school in the morning can be a real challenge, but with some planning and anticipation of a little chaos as new routines are learned, mornings can be less stressful and more enjoyable for all.

Organizing experts suggest starting the night before and learning some new vocabulary words: drop zone and launch pad.

Experts define the drop zone as the place where family members drop their stuff when they get home. The drop zone, with a bit of daily organizing, then morphs into the launch pad for the next morning.

The secret is to designate a single location where items are dumped, then organized for the following day. The launch pad should contain all the items that need to leave the house with the student the next morning, including backpacks, lunch boxes, athletic shoes and uniforms, musical instruments and music.

Containing the gear when you have several children sometimes requires an industrial modus operandi.

In the Terri and Brett Van Heuveln household, each of the four kids has a locker. Dad Brett got the vintage metal lockers from the now-closed Homestake mine in Lead,

The lockers are just inside the door at the Van Heuveln house, and the kids, who range from a 4-year-old to a sixth-grader, make that their first stop when they arrive home.

"We try to get their shoes and jackets into the locker. They don't always go in there, but we are getting better at that," said Terri Van Heuveln.

Donna Larson manages a household of four children who attend three different schools. The Larsons also have cubbies in their mudroom that they refer to as lockers, just off the garage. Kids come in, and the backpacks go in the cubbies.

"They keep all their soccer equipment, dance gear and backpacks from school in their locker," Larson said. "I try to get them to think ahead for what they need for school and activities for the next day."

With the start of public schools this week, kids will be bringing home permission slips, information from school, homework and artwork. Organizing experts recommend setting aside some time each afternoon or evening to go through all the paperwork to make mornings smoother.

"I usually have to ask them to retrieve papers from their backpacks," Larson said. "I have a mailbox for them to put the papers in. The more urgent ones I do that day; the others I put in the box to work on as time allows.

"I have a folder for each child that I keep in my pantry, close by so that I can go through that when needed, whether that be a spelling list we pull out later or even the school manual," Larson said.

Van Heuveln said her family also keeps on top of the incoming paperwork daily.

"(The children) usually have a folder they come home with. One of us goes through that with them. We also have a basket in the kitchen that becomes a dumping ground. If it is in there, we know it is something we have to address," she said.

When kids come home from school, Van Heuveln says they have an after-school routine.

"We get the backpack cleared out right away. The good thing is it is usually consistent which days they have homework and which days they do not," she said.

After the kids are done with their homework, backpacks go back into the locker.

The system has applications for grownups, as well. Parents can corral their essentials in the drop zone by hanging the car keys on a hook or dropping them into a bin or container every time - no more searching for lost car keys.

Moms can simplify their day by designating and consistently using a drop zone for purse, tote and necessities that leave the house the next morning. A bin or basket can hold DVDs that need to be returned to the video store, outgoing mail, shopping lists and library books.

To simplify the system, experts suggest that the launch pad be pared down to the necessities. Not every jacket, coat and pair of shoes should be in the launch pad. Kids each need one jacket, one pair of in-season shoes, the backpack and current paperwork.

Experts also suggest designating a color for each child. One child may have a hot pink backpack and a hot pink bin for her stuff; her dance recital and dentist appointments on the family calendar can be labeled in hot pink. A brother's color may be navy, and a third child's lime green. When all the children know their color, the whole family can help get random stuff in the right bin.

The trick to taking off from the launch pad and getting to school on time?

"We try to have everything ready the night before," Van Heuveln said. This includes lunch. "If they want a lunch, they have a deadline to tell Brett by a certain time. If you don't have your request in for a homemade lunch, you can eat hot lunch," she said.

Meantime, when all the school gear is ready to go, families can focus on taming the other monster in the home: laundry.

"The biggest thing is to have clean clothes in their drawers so they have something to wear," Van Heuveln said.

"We watch the weather the night before, or look at the paper to see what the paper says about weather," Larson said. "Last night, we laid out the clothes so it wasn't a big decision what to wear this morning."

And as the kids grow and mature, using the drop zone and launch pad method pays off. "It gets easier as they get older," said Van Heuveln.

Larson agreed. "My oldest is a freshman, and she is self-sufficient at this point."

How does Larson manage to get four kids on time to three separate schools? "Carpool! It lets me stay home with my younger two to make sure they make it to school on time, and it just makes sense with gas prices so high. It also helps with congestion at the schools," she said.

Once the kids are off to school, Larson begins her day of behind-the-scenes work. On Tuesday, the first day of school, she was out shopping to stock the fridge by 9 a.m., and dinner was on the stove by noon, "because when school is out, that is their time, when activities start."

For more information, go to organizedhome.com or virtuallyorganized.com.

Contact Marinell Scott Thornburg at 394-8280 or marinell.thornburg@rapidcityjournal.com.