We do a lot of cooking outside as well, but we love our rear kitchen. The refer is on the side but other than that the rest of the kitchen is across the back. What this does is make the TT seem much bigger, with more living space. No one has to squeeze by the DW (or me), if we're cooking, making coffee etc to get to and from the bathroom, and bedroom. Also, I'm the early riser of the two of us, so when I'm up making coffee etc while the wife is still sleeping, my "banging around" as she calls it is at the other end of the rv. As far as the contents of cabinets goes, we try to secure everything anyway and haven't noticed it being much worse than our previous mid kitchen rig. When we purchase a fiver in a few years it will probably be a rear kitchen model.