What an exciting project! I would start off with sectioning it with shelves. perhaps include a photo to give us an idea how narrow it is?

I agree that bench space in your pantry would be a better use of all that space. I'm not quite finished building this yet, but I have a narrow walk in pantry. I put a bench at the end and I will add some shallow shelving to the left on the wall. This bench will house my microwave underbench, and the coffee machine above bench. The draw is for microwave dishes, and the cupboard to the left will be for less used electrical appliances storage. It also has a fixed panel to allow for shelving that comes out from the wall and I still get to utilise that corner for storage. Eventually I will put overhead cupboards over this bench for coffee cups etc. It will be great to have somewhere close to pantry to put groceries down and it keeps my least used appliances still at a convenient place and out of sight. Closer to the door I have a recessed area for my narrow extra fridge/freezer. I have left my toaster on the main kitchen bench as we use it daily.

A big island would be good, if you can afford that space in front of the fridge and dishwasher. Microwave can go up higher in the cupboard space to give you a bit more bench top area, or can go under the bench of the new island.

These are all great ideas. Thanks so much. We're going to see how we "fit" in the space at first. I hate to cook and my boyfriend does it so infrequently that we may not need a lot of room for a pantry. I bought this place more than 2 years ago and it's almost done (yep they took their sweet time). It was initially going to be just me, but it will be me, my partner and my borrowed cat. Haha... But I always wanted to start afresh so about 4 months ago (when there was about a month to go, they've since extended the completion date), I had a huge garage sale and sold or donated pretty much everything I own. We'll be starting anew and won't have heaps to store. Only about 2 months to go.