> Given this, usually the best route is to do what we usually do with financial debts, pay the principal off gradually. On the first feature I'll spend an extra

> Given this, usually the best route is to do what we usually do with financial debts, pay the principal off gradually. On the first feature I'll spend an extra couple of days to remove some of the cruft. This should be managed carefully to prevent a lot of independent gradual improvements that don't follow a clear architectural pattern and end up conflicting with each other. Furthermore, all code changes to existing modules require validation of the affected functionalities, which are often hard to spot. Hence, I'd say that a wide scale refactoring effort needs a clear testing plan before it's put into practice.