I have a 1500W auto->AC inverter in our emergency kit. At that point, you don’t need to run the whole house, just some emergency appliances, water pump, furnace (we do have a back up wood stove,) fridge (or put your cold stuff outside) enough lights to keep from walking into the walls. If you run it through the household circuit, remember to pull the mains first.
The power goes out frequently here, because we live near the mountains in the middle of a bunch of tall fir trees that cause problems when it gets stormy. We have a thirty year old 5KW generator with a Briggs IC engine hooked to natural gas. We flick a switch on the electrical panel and start it up... Life then goes on as normal with the addition of a little generator noise, but we have to remember not to run the microwave and the toaster at the same time, because they are both on the same side of the 240v generator output and it causes problems. Our power has been out for two weeks straight on a couple occasions. All of our neighbors have generators as well. When coming home on a stormy day you can hear the generators running as you approach our neighborhood. We run the generator 24/7 until the power comes back on. The oil level is checked once a day.
We have a 5KW Honda clone generator as a backup but so far it has only been used by family and friends.