Fridge freezer actually IN new kitchen or in utility room?

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

We're having a kitchen extension and utility room built at the moment . The guy who drew the plans suggested a small integrated under counter fridge in the kitchen itself to increase counter space and a standalone fridge freezer in the utility room. Dh thinks this is a good idea.

I, with my increasingly creaky knees, don't relish the thought of constantly crouching down to find things like the jar of mustard hiding at the back of the under counter fridge (I do this at my mum's house and it drives me mad - i am so used to an eye level fridge.)

And I also think the "spare" smaller fridge should be the thing that's tucked away in the utility room, not the main fridge freezer which we would be using more and would be better placed nearer to where we will be preparing food.

Help me decide what we should try and plan for! I suppose a compromise would be an integrated above counter fridge in main kitchen (no knee problem then) and put up with the slight further journey to the fridge freezer in the utility room.

God I'm so sick of thinking of trivialities like placement of fridges but when I think of the ££££ it will cost I want to get right and not be cursing for the next 20 years every time I open the fridge door.

I didn't mind an integrated fridge. It was under the counter beneath the kettle so was handy for milk.

You can get them integrated above the counter you know.

Or you can have fridge drawers now. You can find everything in those.

Our current kitchen has a cool room. Yeah, sounds great. Can't actually put anything other than fridge stuff in it though, it uses a shit ton of electricity and it's noisy. So we turned it off and use it as a pantry instead. Now it's full of food and most of our kitchen crap. Except there isn't really quite a big enough gap anywhere else to stand a fridge except the futility room and it is really annoying constantly going to it to get the milk out for tea, then back again to put the milk back. Then all the stuff for lunch etc and then you forget something so you go traipsing back. If we can ever afford to replace the kitchen it will definitely have fridge drawers right under the kettle!

We are in the planning stages of our kitchen and are trying to concentrate on the 'flow'.

Dishwasher near the plates, cutlery & glasses.

Fridge near the kettle. Oven near, but with space, to the sink.

Large fridge freezer in the kitchen, spare freezer in the garage for BBQ stuff and extras. Probably spare fridge for the same reason.

The washing machine already lives in the futility room, we use it far less than the fridge/freezer! The spare room has drying racks, ironing board, iron etc so everything is where it should be for ease of use.

I have a tall ff in both the kitchen and utility room. I miss not having a plumbed in ice and cold water dispenser.

We have an (integrated) ff in our kitchen. We redid our kitchen last year, prior to that we had an integrated huge fridge that the previous owners had put in, but it only had a tiny ice box type freezer at the top. Just about big enough for some frozen peas and a packet of fish fingers. We brought our old ff with us and stuck it in the garage (futility room is quite small). I didn't think having the main freezer at some distance would bother me, but it was more of a pain than I anticipated.

When we had our kitchen redone last year, I opted for a built in fridge freezer with a 2/3 split in favour of the fridge. As others have said, the freezer part is not huge but a vast improvement on what we had before, and we still have the ff in the garage.

My parents have an under the counter small fridge and a massive ff in their utility room. It drives me mad having to squat down to find things in their fridge, and my knees are in much better shape than theirs!

You design your kitchen - get an American fridge freezer plumbed in for instant ice and filtered cold water. I do have an under counter wine chiller though but the bending down is a bother. I deliberately chose an eye level oven rather than a range type oven for this very reason. In my forties and this would be essential.

Thanks, all. Can't see us having room for both a fridge and freezer in the kitchen. Or a big American fridge freezer. I want an eye level oven so some wall space will be taken up with that.
Dh still isn't convinced about all this. I am working on it.