Personalizing things in our lives can be fun and functional at the same time. The same is true when we decide to make improvements or repairs to our homes. One of the first things I did to my home was replace the kitchen faucet. It took about four years of dealing with a faucet I despised before I finally went to the local hardware store, chose one I liked and installed it.

Things in our homes should be functional, especially something used as often as the kitchen faucet.

Replacing a faucet can be a chore, especially since it involves working under a sink, but if you’re at least a little handy, the task can be completed in less than half a day at most. Your biggest challenge will be selecting your favorite replacement because the choices are numerous.

Other ideas for making your home more user friendly can include a new shower head. This idea is much easier to tackle. It doesn’t involve climbing under a sink, and you don’t even have to turn the water off to the house like when replacing a faucet.

There are other things I’d like to improve upon, but I also want to get the most out of the work I put into the place.

But what I found while speaking with a local Realtor is that the age-old ideas of improving the kitchen and bathroom to provide the biggest return on investment are no longer true.

In fact, according to research conducted by the National Association of Realtors found that complete kitchen upgrades provide only about a 60 percent ROI on average, while bathroom upgrades provide an ROI of 50 percent. The improvements that provided the biggest ROI were insulation and roof upgrades. While that makes sense, it goes against everything I heard before.

What this tells me is if I decide to stay in my home long-term, instead of improving the kitchen and bathroom first, I should focus on improvements that will make me happy while I live there.