Glasses and cups, spices and oils, baking ingredients.

not too much, I am pretty short! I have less frequently needed serving dishes, party trays, holiday dishes, large storage containers and plastic ware. Over my OTR MW I have specialty baking pans and over the fridge is our liquor and a large stand mixer.

My only uppers are 4 horizontal lift-up cabinets. The bottom 2 are glass-fronted, and I store my glasses, mugs, ramekins, wooden salad bowls, and pitchers there. My upper 2 hold lesser-used serving items.

I donated a lot of extra mismatched mugs and glassware after the remodel.

So it sounds like alot of you don't store your glasses and mugs in a lower drawer. But do your plates and bowls work well in lower cabinets?

I do like having the plates and bowls in the base cabinet drawers, but can't say I have a strong opinion about having them there over having them in an upper cabinet. I could really live with them either way. We also keep shorter mugs in our top drawers, but the taller ones don't fit, so are in the upper section with the glasses and pitchers.

I,too, have my plates, some saucers in my lowers where they are pull-out drawers fitted on shelves (better than sheleves themselves but less ideal than the base drawers).

Regarding the original question, for me at least the reachable uppers have cups, glasses, tea/coffee, sugar etc. The not-so-reachable uppers have accumulated junk and I am planning to buy those wire stemware organizers from Ikea and use it for formal stemware.

Speaking of preferences, I would certainly prefer having everything in lowers, if I could have enough storage. I would do away with whatever uppers I have (apart from a pantry deep cab which I love).

I think it depends. Our family is fairly tall...ranging from the shortest person (me) at 5'10" to the tallest (DH, so far) at 6'5". We decided that, for us, dishes in the upper cabinets worked better as the first two shelves are at a perfect height for us when taking things out/putting things away. We can all reach even the top most shelf of our 36" tall cabinets w/o assistance...I can't reach the very back of the top most shelf (we have 3 shelves + the bottom of the cabinet in each one, so the top shelf is pretty high), but I can reach half-way in.

What we did do is put things like pots & pans, mixing bowls, casserole/baking dishes, etc. in the drawers b/c (1) they're heavier and it's easier to lift something heavy up then pull it out & down, (2) several are too big to store efficiently in upper cabinets (12" & 15" depth), (3) we have a lot more room in drawers so we can keep them together in the right zones, and (4) I'm the one that uses most of these items & I'm the shortest! I think my height is just right for either upper cabinets or drawers. I suspect 6' is the point at which it starts becoming better to use upper cabs for dishes & glasses.

So...drawers:

Buehl -- I understand about thinking about the height. I am 5'8" and DH is 6'7". I will have to consider all that. Thanks!

And thanks for all the pictures!