[asutekku]

It's inconvenient as soon as you need to get something from the bottom of the fridge, kitchen layout does not change this one at all. And I grew up in a home with multiple chest fridges in addition to a shelved ones so I know the hurdles.

They are good to store something you're not accessing all the time though, like frozen berries etc.

[tshaddox]

I think that inconvenience could be manageable depending on how full the fridge is and what sort of organizing features it has.

It’s already pretty inconvenient to get something out of the back of a traditional fridge that is completely full.

[KPGv2]

Yeah, my in-laws literally stand around the fridge with it open for multiple minutes while they shuffle food around to get to things they've tetrised into the back, and then to re-organize once they've gotten what they need.

They periodically live with us because they're quite old at this point, and my wife and I have already discussed replacing our fridge/freezer combo with a standalone fridge and switching solely to a chest freezer in the mudroom just so they stop doing this with the freezer, too.

The freezer is almost entirely for things already in boxes anyway. Frozen wontons, frozen ice cream cones, microwaveable meals, frozen blocks of fish. It's all easy to organize in a chest freezer.

I'd never considered a chest fridge before, and if I didn't have a wife and kids, as of today I'd be seriously considering it. As it is, can't trust kids not to make an inaccessible mess of something like that, and wife wouldn't like the kitchen arrangement becoming wonky. Though the fridge's current position makes it clear a previous owner didn't understand anything about kitchen layouts when they remodeled a MCM home.

Maybe I could put a chest fridge there with cabinetry above (gap between), and then some place we currently have cabinets all the way to the floor, remove the bottom and put in another chest fridge.

Might be something to consider once we've fixed all the supreme fuckups previous owners did.

[ghaff]

I find French door refrigerators work well. The bottom compartment makes it pretty easy to see everything.

I do have an upright freezer in the basement. If I ever needed to replace it I’d probably get a chest freezer.