Hi Jess,
I have a morning routine, an after school one and a bedtime one that helps get the day run smoothly.
Get up and dressed at 7am.
Put a wash load on straightaway. This is a wash load of clothes needed for the next day, not the same day.
Feed any animals and make a cup of tea or coffee for yourself.
Get breakfast and packed lunches ready. Put away all food you use as soon as you have finished with it.
Then get DC up. Get them dressed and feed them.
Get school bags ready and get food out of freezer for dinner that night.
School run. Don't hang around and gossip - you lose momentum. You can do that when things are in better order.
Come home and turn the radio on or put your favourite music on. Sort breakfast dishes straightaway - wash dishes and put away, wipe kitchen surfaces. (If you work, then do this before you leave the house. Keep breakfast really simple: one bowl of cereal and juice each or toast and milk each, so there's not lots to prepare.)
The laundry wash should be ready by now, so hang it up to dry. If your radiators are already covered in clothes, then sweep them all up in wash basket or pile them on the sofa, hang up the wet stuff and then straightaway fold the dry stuff, sorting it as you fold it, into piles of what belongs to who.
By then it's about 10 am.
Have a break now and do what you like until after school.
Have another routine set up when they get back from school.
Empty school bags and clean out packed lunch boxes. Give DC a snack at table, not on the way home. This is a sneaky way to get them to sit down and remember stuff they need to tell you, so you avoid them saying, 'Oh it's assembly today and I need to be a dinosaur - are you coming?' as you walk out the door in the morning. 
Get DC to hang up their coats, put shoes away and give them that pile of laundry you sorted this morning, so they start to take responsibility for putting their own clean stuff away. Tell them to put it in their room.
Most DC want some screen time or time out to play with friends straight after school. I use that time to cook tea.
While it's cooking have a 5 minute tidy of all main surfaces and a 5-10 minute hoover.
Keep tea simple so there aren't lots of pans, and clear it up straight away afterwards.
Then final routine is bedtime. Get DC in bath and clean bathroom while they're in there. Wipe surfaces, polish mirror and taps, chuck out old shampoo bottles etc, quick scrub of loo (flylady tip - much nicer to clean loo for 10 seconds every day than to have to really clean it after weeks of neglect!)
After bath, get them to tidy rooms for 5 mins, no more. Just ask them to do one job for now. E.g. please put all your clothes in the wash basket or all your toys in the toy basket - that way they know what to do, and when 5 mins is up, praise the effort and leave it there. 5 mins a day will get it sorted in the end.
Once they are in bed, stick another wash on, then watch tv or have a bath while its on. Hang it up to dry before bed. When TV is on, jump up every time the ads come on and tidy up until they end. It's only a couple of minutes at a time, but if you just tidy one surface or clear up one set of things, it's like magic.
If you do this every day, your house will be straight in no time and you still have the day to your self to do other stuff.