[The below is the section introduction]
Tidying is software design addressing you, your relationship to your code, & ultimately your relationship with yourself. In the next book in the series we'll talk about how & why teams perform software design together. After that we'll talk about software design & it's role in relationships with non-programmers. Tidying is geek self-care.
The mechanics of the tidyings will come to you with practice. Most of them require no automated support. Programming environments inexplicably lack automated support for refactoring even now decades after it became feasible. But okay. I want you to get used to designing software a little at a time, all the time. Tidyings are gateway refactorings.