I don't think that people dislike pull-out shelves as much as they prefer drawers. Here are a few reasons: things don't fall off the back; and opening a drawer is one step, whereas opening a cabinet and then pulling out a shelf is two steps; the inside of the cabinet door tends to get banged up because people don't always push the shelf in all the way before they try to close the drawer. Other people prefer the look of a cabinet door, though, and in those cases, pull-out shelves are the way to go.

One more thing that I like is spice racks on the inside of the upper cabinet doors, close to the range.

My cabs are being installed as we speak; my old cabs had shelves, so I don't yet have an opinion on pullouts vs drawers. I definitely like the idea of having recycling and trash cans (not a trash compactor) in a cab next to sink. I personally don't like potfillers but there are a lot of ardent fans out there. I knew I wanted bookshelves for cookbooks on the island. Like a lot of people on this forum, I started off with a list of definite yes/nos and a separate, unbeknownst to me much longer list of don't knows. I only wish I had found this forum earlier in the design phase. HTH.

Everyone has a different cooking style and different likes / dislikes. What I suggest is that you look at what you have, figure out how you use it and then plan the storage around that. For example, I rarely bake so don't need a baking center or much storage in that department. However, I do a lot of ad hoc / impromptu / no recipe cooking with a variety of spices so having them easily to hand where I can see all that I have is very important.

We're keeping our existing cabinets so changing configuration wasn't an option. We have, however, put in pull-out shelves wherever they'd work in the lower cabs. My one issue with them is that the sides are very low. Not a very good thing with spillables / breakables. We'll be adding in some higher sides at some point (basically making them more drawer-like).