A closet in a house shared across a split week does not need to hold everything a child owns. It needs to hold the week. When it holds the full wardrobe, the good clothes get buried, the wrong sizes crowd the rod, and somebody ends up digging through a laundry basket at 7am. Size the space to what the child actually wears between handoffs, and the drawers start to behave.
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Count the outfits, not the clothes
Count how many outfits a child wears in one split week, then add one spare for the day that goes wrong. Include pajamas and the play clothes that come home muddy. Count separately for each child, because one will outgrow things on a different schedule than the other. Those numbers set the size of the space you need and tell you what can live in storage.
Measure the rod and the reach
Measure the rod length and count how many hangers it holds with a little room between them. Check the height of the rod too. A rod a child can reach without a step stool gets used, and one out of reach turns into a pile on the chair. Put the things a child grabs every morning at their height and the seasonal things up high.
Match the drawers to folded stacks
Pull a drawer out and fold one week of shirts to see how they stack. Measure the depth, not just the width. Shallow drawers take folded stacks, deeper drawers take bins, and a bin in a drawer that is too narrow leaves a gap that the sock drawer will fill forever. Sort by type first, then by size, and label each bin with the size and the child's name.
Leave room to grow
Kids change size faster than the clothes they own. Leave some empty space on each shelf and in one drawer so the next size has somewhere to land. Keep one bin for clothes that are too big for now and one for clothes that are too small, and swap them when the seasons turn. Empty space is not wasted space in a kids' closet. It is where the next size goes.
Check the path and the handoff
Can the child open the closet door without moving a chair or a bag? Can they reach the drawer they need while standing up? If the path is blocked, they will stop using the closet and start using the floor. Then name the person who checks the closet at each handoff and what they check. A quick look for the missing shoe or the outgrown coat keeps the closet working between weeks.
A closet that is findable is a closet that works. It does not have to look like a catalog photo. It has to hold the week and let a child get dressed without a search party.