You'd be surprised how many older houses don't comply with current electrical codes.

And even the current code in CA doesn't require separate circuits for each room. They require separate circuits for different functionality. E.g. lights vs power plugs.

Even easier then, just turn off the lights.

Wouldn't that be... all of them? They were literally not build with code that didn't exist at the time. Why would that be surprising ?

You have obviously not been to the UK; breaker box will have a few illegible marker squiggles, most faded beyond reading, some with tape over and a second conflictibg squiggle. Even if you decode them then the fridge is just as likly to be on the hall as the kitchen

Same here. You can still trivially try the various switches and see if they cut off the area of the house you're interested it. If the fridge is on the same circuit as the lights you want to kill, there goes you plan. But otherwise, it's fine. In most AirBnB's and rented rooms for short stays the fridge is empty or just has some water/sodas anyway, it's not like there would be the family's food for the month..

Thank you. This seems to me like the common sense approach to solve this problem IRL, as opposed to in a spherical cow world. It will work in 99% cases. In the rest, one can sleep with the lights on, or cover them (if possible).

Unscrewing the bulb a couple turns used to be a great off switch.

Then Big Lighting ruined that by going to LED strips and what not.

I don't think I've ever seen a breaker box that was clearly and correctly labeled at any house that wasn't still on its first owner.

The first thing I do when renting a new apartment is map out the circuits to outlets and leave a map next to the breaker box. We have also consistently had illegible squiggles (and strange circuit layouts) in Canada

I have been working on the map for my house's circuits for 6 years. It's about 80% done.

Whilst some breaker boxes are nice, modern, and make sense... Others are like this [0] and terrifying.

[0] https://reddit.com/r/australia/comments/yq4hks