I've used a similar approach for technical debt: 1) Get buy-in from the stakeholders that it's OK for developers to spend 30 minutes a day making their life bet

I've used a similar approach for technical debt: 1) Get buy-in from the stakeholders that it's OK for developers to spend 30 minutes a day making their life better; 2) Communicate a vision for what the end goal is to the developers; 3) Get the developers buy-in. If the developers aren't willing to do it in small chunks, then it probably isn't bothering them that much.