We used Plain & Fancy cabinetry. We have a mudroom with built in cabinets and a bench adjacent to the kitchen, but we actually ended up with a desk in the kitchen. I needed to have the phone, laptop, and drop area there for convenience. It does get messy but it's better than the mail ending up on the counters. What helps our area is a window at the desk. We do have a built in file cabinet to the left, which is great for keeping track of kids papers, bills, etc. I am very happy with the desk. Honestly, though, I am the only one who sits there. When the kids want to do homework they end up at the island. But at least my island doesn't have mail on it! We have a cabinet beside our clean up sink with 4 recycle bins. I thought it was a silly idea pushed by the contractor, but I have gotten to really appreciate it. For some reason, my family had a difficult time carrying the recyclables out to the garage. But they have no problem pitching them in the special indoor bins. The kitchen table is in the foreground of this desk picture: This is a little further to the right showing how the desk ties into the kitchen. The shelving to the right of the desk holds cookbooks. You can also see a tiny bit of the mudroom/bench area to the left where the backpacks end up: And just to show how it ties into the rest of the kitchen with the island where the kids prefer to spread out their homework, this is just a little further to the right of the desk: Hope this helps. Good luck to you!

@clueless, there is actually 42" between the counter and the pantry wall. And we're doing bypass doors, specifically so I don't have to move people sitting there to open the pantry. The hall alongside the bathroom is 40". There are an additional 6" between the wall and appliances once you get past the bathroom. So with a 10" deep shelf, it would still leave plenty of room to pass. It's not a through way, just in and out for primarily me. However, we do plan to live here forever, so storage here will be modular or freestanding so we can change it easily as our requirements change. Like finally having both girls grown out of Girl Scouts so I can retire from my post as "assistant troop leader in charge of pretty much everything creative" and get rid of troop craft supplies. This is the only really usable storage we have on the ground floor other than kitchen cabinets and the bathroom vanity. We do have a closet under the stairs, but the configuration of the walls in there makes it unbelievably bad. That's a project for another time. Not using it is not an option

The owner's retreat is the master bedroom and it was designed for the door to enter from the mudroom because my husband is a truck driver who works odd/opposite hours as me. The laundry room aslo has a door that goes into the master closet which connects to the master bedroom so we don't have to wake each other as we're coming and going. This also allows me to keep dirty/greasy clothes in a limited area of the house. We live on 5 acres of farmland so it's easier to limit the dirt to one area this way. I am considering a small bench next to the washer and dryer for sitting down to take off shoes, it is a 4ft space so does that seem sufficient for 2 people? This is the full house plan, however we did not do the optional drop zone because it seemed smaller than the 4ft area being left in the laundry room.

Following up my earlier comment…if you pull the cubby into the middle of the space as a partition, there are lots of options for the desk…on the dark wall (monitors/wires will disappear/blend in); facing the back of the cubby (which could be trimmed out/painted/wall papered/decorated or covered in cork as someone suggested; or perpendicular to the cubby partition, especially if there is a window with a view on the wall we don’t see in your photos. Don’t worry about the monitors…arrange your desk in the position that feels most comfortable for you while you are working. The mudroom cubby area should be on the side closest to the door into the room, which I’m guessing is on the right since that is where you placed the cubbies. The good thing is you can move/tweak the placement of your desk and the cubbies until it feels just right for you! I would anchor the office space with a rug and place the chairs and the mirror (vertically) in the cubby space. You could do a gallery wall on the dark wall. I think it has a lot of potential and makes good use of the room!