James Wallace Harris has a very good post called "Ordinary Life and Science Fiction" in which he laments how science fiction stories rarely feature details of ordinary life. He focuses the point around the recent serialized novel Marsbound by Joe Haldeman, but expands the issue by showcasing how The Road by Cormac McCarthy merged both exciting vistas and drama with slices of ordinary life. Other science fiction stories which I believe do a good job of this include A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller and "Pump Six" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I don't know if it's significant that the first two stories which jumped to mind as combining SF and ordinary life are both variations on post-apocalyptic views of the future, but that's something I'll have to reflect on.

As a final note, I highly recommend people bookmark Harris's excellent blog Auxiliary Memory. Rarely a day goes by in which he doesn't post something which forces me to stop and reflect on his words.