For my home electrical power plan I used the 6 circut APC UTS6H which supports 3 power sources (city, battery and generator). I have one circuit set to run my main lights off of my APC 1000 battery, that cuts on automatically in about 3 seconds if the city power goes off. 

The other 5 circuits are set to run off of the portable generator in a load sharing configuration.  When the power goes out I have to manually start the portable generator an plug it into a plug on the back of my house that is wired to the APC transfer switch in the basement. This means that if the fridge and furnace are running off the generator and someone turned on the microwave the APC will turn off what it needs to so the microwave has enough power. The fridge is set that it only needs to run 15 minutes each hour, the same with the freezer and furnace. So the APC can turn them off if something else needs more power.

APC Transfer Switch featuers explained Video

Video of Honda 2000 generator with APC UTS10Bi transfer switch

APC store link