I second shallow shelves. One wall in my pantry is 4” deep shelves and we find it very useful, although 6” would have been better (contractor put a wall in the wrong spot and we later had to lose some inches when it was moved). If 3’ is more than enough for you, how about 2.5” and 6” shelves? Or make your deep shelves shallower to accommodate them. They are great for small things that might get lost behind other things on deep shelves. And things you want to see at a glance or grab often. for example, all of my oils, vinegars, spices, hot sauces, salts, stocks, etc (other than what I keep by the range) are on these shelves so when I am cooking I don’t have to hunt around for anything. We love them!

There will be a top-freezer full-depth fridge, approx 28" deep x 30" wide. You'll see right now it's in the lower left corner. I'm proposing moving it to the upper left corner.

Don't box the refrigerator in with fixed shelving or cabinetry. When it dies or needs to be worked on or cleaned behind and around, you need space to move it for servicing/ cleaning or removed for replacement. And room for a body to fit to accomplish the task. Without having to demo the pantry.

Also, don't install it snug to the wall. Need space on the hinge side in order to fully open the door and swing way past 90 degrees so you can pull out crisper drawers to access contents and remove for cleaning.

As drawn, it looks like the door into the pantry is too narrow to fit the refrigerator through anyway.

Best location will be directly opposite the door, where the enclosed cabinet is, allowing enough space between the refrigerator and the wall for function as mentioned ^^. As well as breathing space for the refrigeration--air circulation.

I like organized open shelving in a pantry but I aslo like all mayvhing storage containers and I agree 6" deep shelves are great sometimes but relly a pantry is designed for what you want to store and how much. Is this an extra fridge ? If so does it need to be so large ?

Consider furnishing the pantry with freestanding shelving units when you move in and use them for as long as it takes to realize what you would have to do to make the space more perfect.

(hint: you may find the freestanding shelving units work just fine)

Store the brooms and cleaning supplies where food is not stored.

We are going to use freestanding shelving. They are already finished and are adjustable, forever. As you change things around. And are considerably less expensive than having them built.

my walk in pantry is 6'wide by 9' long and this is what I did in mine. This shown before paint and before it was fully stocked. on the left side it is 12" deep shelves, turntables in the corner and 24" deep on the back wall but only 18" deep on the right had wall. Your wish for a full size fridge in there will eat up a lot of your space for door swing and access.

What are mayhving storage containers?

Mayhving = Matching

Thank you for all this input. A lot of food for thought! (bad pun)

You can see into the pantry from the kitchen, and you pass it as you enter the great room, which the kitchen is located in. I'm pretty sure the pantry door will always be open. That's why the one enclosed cabinet is directly across from the doorway. At least that part of it won't look messy! As for putting the fridge in that spot instead, I think its door could interfere with the door to the room--or I guess they'd clear each other by about 8"...since the doorway is 30"? But that depends how far out the fridge sits from the wall.

The door will be 30" wide; it looks narrow in the drawing b/c it was originally a pocket door, which yes would have been too narrow for most fridges, including (probably) a counter-depth fridge. (I might get a counter-depth fridge.)

Right now I have two full-size fridges, one FD 36" and one 30" top freezer. I use them both all the time. The freezers are full and when I entertain, the fridges are full. In the new kitchen I'll have a cab-depth FD, much shallower than what I'm used to. Given that we'll be 30 minutes from the nearest supermarket, I expect to stock up on certain large items which will certainly require a second fridge. I can probably live with the pantry fridge as counter depth rather than full-depth, b/c that only loses a couple of inches, but not two cabinet depth fridges.

What width is the aisle you all left for access? I think 3ft is enough for me, but I'm getting pushback on that. I don't see ours as a place where multiple people will be hanging out or using the space at once.

The architects don't want to put shelving on both walls. They said "the remaining circulation becomes a no-outlet narrow corridor that is not very functional." (It was already no-outlet, so I'm not sure why that's a problem.) But I think the empty wall is a waste of space when I could have very useful shallow shelves there. Even 8-9" shelves would be good. It's true that when the shelves are too deep, things get lost.

I have a list of things I'd be storing--everything from canned and boxed foods to canisters of flour, sugar, etc, large dutch ovens and other large pans I only use occasionally, cereal in bags and boxes that I buy in bulk (that's why I have the one tall closed cabinet with drawers), bags of dog food, additional cookbooks I won't have open shelf space for in the kitchen, and yes wraps and kitchen trash bags etc. So I need shelves that are deep and shallow.

I think with my proposed design revision, I can allow more space around the fridge (I'd probably use the space to store the stepstool and other things).

@aklogcabin, where are you getting your freestanding shelving?

I will say that I hesitate to wait on getting the cabinetry put in because I know I'm going to want it built-in, having had both reach-in pantry closets and freestanding shelves before, and if we don't do it now, we'll never do it and it will always be a source of frustration for me. But I'll consider it!

As long as you have adjustable shelves, you’ll be happy you did not wait. My aisle is 33” (much smaller space overall) and it is fine, but I’m not a large person. My husband is a bigger guy, though, and he says it is fine. I squatted down and bent over and got into all the positions I thought I might in a pantry and had my husband measure how much space I took up to make sure 33” was enough before we pulled the trigger. We put our deepest shelves on the shortest wall because we thought we needed fewer linear feet of that. I recommend counter space in the pantry, too. Very useful!

@blueskysunnyday, thank you! that's super helpful. My family is fairly slim and not especially tall, and I don't think we'd have any trouble with 3ft, but I just now did what you described--great idea--bending and crouching and reaching to see how much space I'd take up. It feels like more than enough space.

Also, if I just flip the door on the fridge to open into the room instead of into the wall, that problem is solved. The cabs next to it won't be in the way.

One argument for having shelves on each side of the pantry and having a somewhat narrow walkway is the bottom shelves can act as steps for someone to climb to reach the top selves.

Frankly I think "the remaining circulation becomes a no-outlet narrow corridor that is not very functional." is a line of BS. It is a pantry for storage of generally small items. To call it a "corridor" is fallacious, and the "outlet" is where it was entered (overly simple).

@Mark Bischak, Architect, exactly! I sent them a note a little while ago saying, "it's a closet...for food." I am at the end of my patience... Like, just work with me here, people??

I made another doodle which probably doesn't work, but I wanted to try the fridge across from the doorway. Maybe too much chance that the two doors will becoming annoying. The pantry door will nearly always be open. There's more aisle space than I need in this one, so I could conceivably make the lower shelves deeper on both long walls.

The size of the pantry leads me to believe it was not designed to accommodate a refrigerator at the start. The solution may be to impact another space to properly accommodate the refrigerator.

Well yes, that seems evident, even though from the very beginning I told everyone I planned to put a spare fridge there. The only other place is the basement, and that will more than annoy me because I really want to stop carrying large platters of food up from the basement.

Could the fridge “back in” to the pantry and open to a space outside of the pantry (so it is still using room in the pantry but you don’t have to worry about door conflicts or squeezing into a corner behind the open fridge door to access food — I worry about this if the fridge is in a corner but opens away from the wall)?

If the fridge is not in the actual pantry you won’t have to worry about the heat and moisture from it degrading the food stored in the pantry either. Can you show what is surrounding the pantry space?

I like (and would find useful like you do) adding narrow shelving so both sides of the pantry have storage. I would not want to go to the basement to store food in a refrigerator either. So it’s worth the pushback on your architects.

Is there an option to increase the pantry width from 5’8” to 6’+?

If you put the refrigerator across from the pantry door opening, can you steal some space behind the refrigerator so you can recess it to counter depth?

Can you use a pocket door for the pantry to eliminate the door swing? There are options like full glass, partial glass, etched/frosted/reeded glass.

Can you use a refrigerator with french doors to reduce the swing depth into the aisle?

Well have looked at the shelving at HD and lowes

We ended up doing double doors into our pantry because it is tiny and they needed to open in. I like that I can back in with arms full of groceries and push the doors open. Then I set them on the little counter to unload.

This is part of a new build

As in still in the planning stages & not yet built?

If we could see the entire floor plan, you may get other ideas on how to manage the surplus refrigerator.

@ci_lantro, it's already built, the room is framed, plumbing and electric are in etc etc. I figured out this was a problem while approving final cabinetry plans. I was out there today and builder said he can recess the fridge a few inches in the short wall on the left if it will help. If I center it on that wall and get a FD model, that won't have quite as much impact on side wall shelving and I could put deep shelves on either side if I want. Fwiw, the builder also agreed with me that I should get a full-size fridge (it's a rural area), that I'll need it in bad weather if the road isn't passable, which was my original thinking.

When I look at fridge specs online a lot of them only show the doors open to 90 degrees, and indeed w/my current FD fridge, the doors will open wider, but they don't need to for me to access everything. If I needed to remove the bins to clean them, as opposed to cleaning them in place (which is a rare event), and the doors couldn't be opened further, I'd need to remove the bins on the doors first in order for the drawers to clear, which honestly is not that hard to do. So I think I have to go to an appliance store now and check out the models in person to make sure I can access everything easily if the doors only open a little past 90. Then I'll make a new drawing...

There is really nowhere else on the first floor with space for a full-size fridge. I was thinking I might get an extra freezer later and stick it in the basement because it would be seldom-used, but this fridge needs to be on the first floor.

Double doors are an interesting idea; I'll look into that. I'm also considering a FD fridge. I can't do a pocket door because it would have to attach in the ceiling, and there's no room in that spot. That's why we changed it to a swing door, also because it would have been narrower.

I made two more of my amateurish attempts at a layout. One has a full-size FD fridge on the short wall, the other has it across from the doorway with a split entry door, per one of the suggestions here. (I'm sure my sizing is not exact but I did my best.)

In the split entry door version, the left half of the door interferes with the possible shelving on that wall, but in the other version, one of the corners probably can't have shelves because of the fridge.

Edited to say, it looks like we're going with something resembling the second layout, with the fridge across from the door.