Some ideas which have helped me are:

• Have a place for everything.  We have A LOT of bookcases.  They are pretty inexpensive.  We also have plastic shelving and lots of rubbermaid containers.  The kids, even the 2yr old keep their workbooks, coloring books, crayons, and pencils inside these containers and the containers are kept on the bottom shelves of our bookcases.  Small manipulatives are kept in plastic baggies, and the baggies inside plastic containers.

• Make a weekly or even a monthly menu.  This is even more critical in my case because I almost never cook American food.  Indo-Pakistani food takes a lot more preparation than most American dishes.  I can really cut down on time if I already know what I'm making, have the items on hand and the meat thawed.  What I do is to figure out how many times in the week I plan to serve chicken, lamb, beef, or vegetables, than plan my menu according to that.  One place I've gotten pretty good recipes from is http://desicookbook.com.