I get frequent questions in generators for home use probably since for decades I was the only one with one plus maintain Hospital standby gensets at work.
All want a fully automatic whole house that they never think about which I don't know of any because someone has to think about maintenance.
Rolling out a pull start, extension cords, pulling out the refrigerator from the wall, fueling, etc... are of no interest... except in a few cases after the fact when power was out for a week and the shock of the utility bill for propane or natural gas hit home...
Life is full of tradeoffs...
All I can say is those interested better get on the list as more internal combustion restrictions go into effect.
The sanctioned remedy is massive solar with Battery Backup but the utility is fighting back asking solar owners to pay more in fixed costs even to offset natural gas customers as the infrastructure costs projected to be spread out by a shrinking user base.
Certainly a genset requires some planning to be practical. For years I did what you describe. The generator lived in the barn. I would haul it out on the 2nd day of the outage. It was pull start, not too much of a hassle since I always ran it dry before putting it away. It was noisy, clunky, and OK for a young guy who couldn't afford anything better. I bought it on closeout in 1998, before the Y2K thing increased generator prices.
Over the years I have set up a more comprehensive installation. I picked the side of my attached garage as my utility area. That's where the heat pump compressor lives, and it also has the man door to the garage. I built a porch roof over that side of the garage and poured a concrete pad. I installed a transfer switch wired to an outdoor connecting point for a generator, then bought an electric start propane 7 kw unit that is connected to a 100 lb. tank at all times. I also have several 20 lb. tanks use for weed burning, shop forge, etc., so normally have about 200 lbs. of propane on hand. I quickly learned the motorcycle battery that shipped with the generator was worthless, so wired the electric start to a full sized deep cycle battery that I keep on a quality maintainer. Switching to generator power is as easy as turning on the propane, hitting the start on the generator, and flipping the transfer switch.
Having an outdoor utility area is nice. I put a small bench by the door where I can pull off muddy boots without tracking the mud into the house, and a mop sink inside where I can either drop stuff for a wash down or conveniently fill a 5 gallon bucket with hot water.
That said, I am anti-generator. I have kept the house 19th century tech in good operating condition, which means gravity feed water and wood heat. As long as I feed the wood stove (actually a fireplace insert), the comfort level of the house doesn't change. The generator is for heating a tank of water and taking a shower. It only needs to run for an hour or two a day.
This last outage I used a little 1000 watt camp generator just to run the FIOS router. I hadn't used it in a decade, and wanted to see if it still ran. I had to pour a little juice into the cylinder to get it started, but then it ran like a champ. And ran. And ran. It was rated at 4.5 hours on a gallon of gas at 50% load. Apparently it's really efficient at low load, because it took over 7 hours to run out of gas. I connected the power to a 1960s line stabilizer to clean up the power a bit. I picked that item up from a defunct photo shop that used it to keep power company fluctuations from wrecking their exposure levels.
This may seem pretty far afield, but I think it's a good idea to look at an integrated off-grid solution instead of just tacking a generator onto a house that is not built for it. If you are stuck with one of the all-electric monstrosities from 30 years ago, you may not have a choice. If one of those things doesn't have power, it's not a house.
I have neighbors who installed an all-electric triple wide years ago. Generally it's a decent place to live, until the power goes out. Then they live in the cold and dark without water or heat until the power comes back. They can't afford a whole house generator, and their only heat is a heat pump.
I don't have anything to say about the South, where staying habitable without AC is a trick, but in northern areas where outages happen with winter storms, I think putting some thought into an integrated solution is a good path. It doesn't take much of a generator to run a pellet stove. Even battery backup might be possible. The bedrooms may get chilly, but that same weenie generator will do fine running electric blankets. Depending on location, rooftop solar in combination with battery e-power might be a solution. I had a friend in northern Idaho who set up a small windmill generator, gravity feed water, and rooftop solar hot water. He said the solar worked well during really cold weather. He used the evacuated solar collector tubes and could get 100 degree water on a 20 below day.
My parents had an oil burning furnace, so we set up a small key-start diesel generator to run off the oil tank. My mother died in that house at 95, and was never cold or without a hot cup of coffee. She also had a propane insert in the fireplace, with a remote control, that would take the chill off the living room if she didn't want to listen to the generator.
People who live in a subdivision may be stuck with mass market solutions, but rural people have more options. How many do you know who use their gas powered welder for emergency power? I know a guy who has one mounted on his farm service truck. Any farmer or logger has provisions for field power. If you are young enough to deal with it, a PTO generator is a great way to get whole house power without a second mortgage. Another friend is a long haul trucker who built his own generator out of a 5 hp. B&S, a GM alternator, and a couple deep cycle batteries. He has a full spectrum of 12 volt appliances for his truck, and wired a couple low voltage circuits into the house. Some people move into their RV.
Everybody's choices will be different. As I see it, the essentials are:
1. It has to work. That means maintenance, and checking the generator in good weather, with the caveat that just because it starts on an 80 degree day does not mean it will start at 10 below. Just leaving stale gas in the tank can turn a generator into a pile of junk that takes hours to get started again.
2. People have to work it. Within limits, there is a trade-off between money and expertise. A whole house standby generator with auto exercise, auto transfer switch, and maintenance contract only requires a fuel supply and someone to check the oil. A 5000 watt portable requires somebody strong enough to pull the starter, load management, frequent fueling, and periodic home maintenance.
3. It has to be safe. Every disaster results in people dying from CO poisoning. Gasoline fires can leave people with no shelter at all. One of the riskiest things is no transfer switch. Back-feeding by just turning off the main breaker works as long as the person doing it knows the risks. The next guy may not know, or it may slip your mind with that extra shot of whisky antifreeze. In my area, shock a line crew once and you will not get your power back. They will shut you off, and not heat your house up again until you have brought the whole house to modern electrical code including a transfer switch.
due to ethanol destroying the carb. Had to fix two engines because of ethanol. 
