I'm sure it sounds strange, but I don't have heat in my house. The winter temperatures are between 0 (at night) and 10 (the high). So my whole house is a refrigerator :-) There were some articles on HN about heating yourself rather than heating the space you are in (or at least minimizing the space that you heat).
You are right, about the need for a fridge. You can live quite a nice lifestyle without it -- even if you are into cooking. There are so many pickles and fermented foods. Yogurt is another thing that you can make which will allow your milk to last longer.
The one thing I will caution you about, though, is making sure you have an emergency food supply. You can't rely on supermarkets to have enough food to last if there is any kind of environmental disaster. I live in Japan and when we had a big earth quake in my area (about 8 years ago), I was shocked that the supermarket was picked clean in about 6 hours! It took them days to restock -- and we didn't have any transportation issues at the time. Having fresh food for a few days is fine, but make sure that you stock enough long term storage foods to last you at least a week.