Yes, that's the way a Gentoo system wants to be handled. I know, I know, mine has been out of normal order since a long time. And it wasn't that bad actually.
Still: Maintain often, maintain early!
It will save you lots of trouble. And though it might seem very annoying, it actually is exactly, why you use a Gentoo-system - to know what's going on under the hood...
Short Bio
Born, went to school, started hacking on free software, did some major high availability sysadmin work in between, now back to my original passion: managing knowledge. :) -- Long CV