I am running a client always with just a few coins in it to verify transactions and act as a peer in the network, but I keep my main wallet offline.
Explain your strategy. You have one wallet for helping the network and one wallet for your money? Like a webserver on the net and a storage server on the intranet (if this IT jargon makes sens for you)?
I suppose you have to manually remember to open up your wallet every 20 days, then?