Do you have room in a laundry room or garage or basement, etc. for an additional refrigerator (either full size or at least compact size)?

I have a CD refrigerator (GE Profile Armoire), which I love. BUT I could never get by with JUST this refrigerator. In addition I have a compact refrigerator that we use for beverages, and I have a compact refrigerator in the laundry room for overflow veggies in the summer, or whatever else is overflowing.

For instance right now we have two dozen cupcakes in the beverage compact refrigerator's drawer. And we have a large bowl of icing in the compact refrigerator in the laundry room. Often times after I make a large pot of sauce or soup, I put it in the extra laundry room fridge. During Christmas that's where all the Christmas cookies lived. And the day after Christmas and Thanksgiving it helped to store the leftovers.

Point being . . . I couldn't do it with just the one CD. We are a family of 4 -5 these days (two adults, two teenagers and an occasional young adult floats in and out).

Note that the doors on this new fridge will be smaller(ie less intrusive) than the old fridge since they are only half the width.

I love, love, love my CD refrig. It looks beautiful and makes more room in my kitchen, BUT if you have another refrig. it would be a good idea. I choose not to get the ice maker on the outside because that takes up more room on the inside. I have an ice maker in the freezer and in the refrigerator there is a little faucet on the side for water. It works fine for us. I have an 18 cubic refrig in my basement and I use it especially for holidays, beer, watermelons, things like that. It is just my husband and I now, but I like to food shop and I feel I need that extra refrig. You still have a growing family and I think you will need one.

I love my CD fridge, too, for the same reasons Organic_Nettie says (and the same you're considering). I don't have an extra fridge or freezer, but we're only a family of three, so it works just fine. (We've hosted 35 people using just this fridge, though it takes a bit of planning to be sure there's room for everything.)

I'd go with the CD fridge, for sure.

The real issue with teenage boys and food comes down to beverage space. I have a CD fridge and two teenage boys. At any given moment I have 5 gallons of milk and juice in the fridge and I go to the store at least 3 days a week. I keep all pop and wine in the basement as I do not really have the room for anything like that in the fridge.

I have a friend who took in a couple of extra boys after the flood and she went through over 12 gallons of milk a week. They kept an extra beverage fridge in the basement.

The rest of the food does not "grow" as much the kids do. Turkeys and hams take up about the same space as when they were smaller and all of your condiments stay about the same. As the kids get bigger you will have fewer leftovers. We have a SxS so the produce drawers are smaller than I'd like but overall I love my CD fridge. Like everyone says - no more lost food in the back.

One thing people say about the CD fridge is that it holds the same amount as the full depth fridge without all the lost items in the back. :)

Amen. :) Now that I have a CD fridge I'm much better about cleaning out aging leftovers and unused condiments, where I used to shove 'em to the back. I have an undercounter unit for beverages and overflow, and I couldn't do without it.

I wished I had paid more and gotten a counter depth French Door Refrigerator. I had went with the full size 33 Inches wides French Door LG SS Refrigerator at the end of the 2006 year. I love the refrigerator but I can't reach the back anyway due to my petite size and I hate how it sticks out into my small kitchen. I have water on the door and ice in the freezer. If I could do it again, I would go with the KitchenAid CD FD Refrigerator that is 36" wide and has water filtered inside the refrigerator.

I was hesitant about the CD too. Growing up we had a regular old side by side and I remember so clearly how chock full it always was, mostly of old food that had been around for at least three days. My mom wasn't the greatest about cleaning out left overs.

This was something that really appealed to me with the argument in favor of the CD, that leftovers don't get lost. The last thing I want is to forget something that is ancient history (last weeks leftovers!) and have my kids think it is okay to eat.

Suffice it to say I was pleased with the CD, not the fridge itself, by the CD works great.

It sounds like you're looking at the Samsung, which is the model I'm getting ready to replace my F&P with. If you want, I'll let you know how well I like the Samsung. Should be here end of this month or beginning of April. Apparently there is a backorder on this model.

I am strongly considering a CD refrig, for all the reasons you stated, plus the fact that as I get older, it's tougher to reach those deep, dark ares of a full-depth frig.

One thing I found--Kitchen Aid makes couter depth frigs that are 3 in. taller than the typical refrigerator (72" vs. 69") in both french door and side by side models. The extra 3 " gets you about an extra cu ft of space. A good option if you're tall enough to reach (I didn't think it made access to the top shelves that much more difficult....)

I debated back and forth very similarly, except our current fridge is even smaller (but so are the boys) and is rarely completely full.

Even so, I ended up choosing the full-depth, FD with water & ice in the door. I kind of regret it now though and I haven't even used it. It sticks out pretty far into the room. And I keep thinking that I probably would have been so happy with even a little more space but now I probably have set myself up to never be able to down-size. It seems like it will probably be a lot harder to be used to more space and then go down to CD. Since we are at this point now with a full-depth, I know I will be living with it for a lot of years (probably until it dies) and I also know that even though I am second-guessing my decision I will be happy with it and the fact that it sticks out into the room farther than I would like won't really be that big of a deal in the big picture of loving our house.

I guess my advice would probably be to go with the CD if you think you would possibly have any other options if that doesn't end up being enough room. If this is your shot and whatever you choose is going to be your ONLY fridge space for quite sometime, I would probably go with the full-depth. I think the frustration of not being able to fit things in the fridge would out-weigh the annoyance of it sticking out into the room.

I solved that same question by getting the full size fridge and simply moving the adjacent cabinets out a few inches. Voila, a full sized "cabinet depth" fridge. Obviously this won't work if you've already installed the cabinets...

Thank you SO much everyone!

It seems most of you are for the CD fridge. We have a small fridge - the kind found in dorm rooms (not tall and skinny but short) which we could also use but there's no practical space to put that in besides the basement. But our kids aren't allowed to drink soda, my husband keeps only a few beers in the fridge at a time, and I keep my diet cokes in room-temp storage so I don't even know what would go in the small fridge. I'm certainly not willing to keep food down there or regular drinks like juice/milk so I really do think we'd be stuck w/ the CD fridge for most of it.

I could keep our old fridge in the basement for holiday meals as well as all the drinks we presently keep in room-temp storage, however I was upgrading to an energy-efficient fridge! why would I want to have the new fridge AND the old fridge, considering that?!

Going up in 3 cubic feet in size on for the fridge portion (free food), when I picture gigantic dice of a cubic foot each in size, that seems like a decent (not great, but decent) improvement... (I hope)!

Here's what I'm too dumb to figure out: if the fresh food portion of a fridge includes the space in the door/doors - regardless of whether it's a 1990 standard fridge or the new french door kinds - how does that translate based on the new layout? In other words my current old fridge has very little door space; it has only one door and its shelves for condiments and butter. The new fridges have space for at least 2 gallons of milk in the door, but less space for condiments and yet still some space for them. So if the milk will no longer be on the main shelves but in the door, does that mean I'll get all that added space on the main shelves + the additional 3 cubic feet of fridge space?

Anyway...thanks for helping me figure all this stuff out!

You can order extra door bins. I find it improves useability, and adds a lot of storage.

Google the best place in the fridge to store milk. There is more and more data on how the door space is the worst spot to store milk because it is warmer than the rest of the frig. The door space is better for keeping condiment jars and things that are not quite so temperature sensitive.

davidro1 - Wow - I didn't know you could do that! I wonder if it's with all brand names or only one or two specific ones? The fridge we're most likely getting is Samsung. Thanks for that tip! I'd probably be happiest if the whole fridge were filled with those drawers because it helps find things when they're categorized!

earth pal - hmmm... I have no reason to suspect you're wrong and yet presumably we'd all know by now if milk went sour too fast or made us sick (?). In my case at least, we go through milk SO fast (3 small, growing boys + us) that it probably wouldn't have time to sour. Also w/ technology improving you'd think this would be an area that would certainly be 'good enough.' But that's interesting nonetheless, thanks for the info! Have you noticed this yourself/had this experience?

The cd is very appealing for all the reasons mentioned, but there were old posts 'what would you have done differently' and in that vein, many or most posters said they regretted cd fridges as they struggle with small spaces. Cd's work in you have other fridge space or are empty nesters or singles.

I know that when I used to entertain it was a constant battle where to put the food, esp when dh wanted to fill the fridge with cokes. I planned company menus around the space, and was limited and finally just gave up. We also have a small kitchen. But Mark Bittman does it well, in a tiny nyc kitchen. Then again, I'm not Mark Bittman.

I am going to love my CD, FD refridge but I did think about a reg depth when I had considered bumping my counters out to match the refridge--also gives you more counter space over the cabs on that same wall--they add filler to the back and you have extra deep counters. Might be worth considering. I had a S/S and HATED it. We entertain all the time and I couldn't get a platter in it--just a regular platter and it wouldn't fit! Drove me insane. Had to have a garage refridge too as a result.

Ok, Yesterday and today, I did a lot a shopping and some cooking for Passover at my cousin's house. We all bring something(s). So I had 2 briskets and a year's worth of vegetables plus a bunch of chickens and more vegetables for soup and stock for later and matz balls, only from scratch, G forbid, a mild preservative would cross her threshhold---and so it's huge soup pots with the same throwaway vegetables as Plllog ( my long gone poor mother would have fits and be so sad at the throwaway part) and roasted yukons plus----- and I hope I remember the precarious stacking of spillables if I ever even consider a cd again. It's good for a bottle of ketchup!!!!lol---Give me a big, big fridge.

Sure I could be more organized and do the stock one day, as PLLLOG did, but hmmmmm. I have a kitchen to do---and front and back doors---and a trip to see DD in Ariz and a dirty neglected cottage, so I try to squeeze in all I can. I'm feeling pretty good these days.

But the teetering stuff in the frig is scary. No cd for me.

Hi, I recessed my full depth fridge into the wall studs and gained almost 4 inches so it looks counter depth and doesn't stick out into my kitchen. Would that be an option for you if you wanted to go with the full depth fridge?