While the state could have prevented people from using refrigerators or vacuum cleaners in various ways (as you say, banning or limiting sales, but also making it illegal and relying on the near-ubiquitous network of infromants to tell on neighbours who vacuumed or used too much electricity), the point is that they didn't. Refrigerators were a common household item in Romanian cities at least, and so were vacuum cleaners. They were produced by Romanian factories and sold very much legally. While electrical blackouts were a problem, they were not prolonged enough to prevent the usefullness of a refrigerator (they commonly happened during the night, and a closed refrigerator can typically isolate well enough to preserve its temperature for 6-8h).