This is a dumb metaphor, probably, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this. But I was using it to explain what I'm discussing with my co-workers all day (on the phone, working from home, what with quarantine and all).

Code is like a closet. What's the fastest way to put away your clothes in the closet? Don't look, throw them in! But now how are you going to find anything? Seems like that's going to take more time than we saved blindly throwing shirts. What if we dump stuff on the top of categorized piles? Still hard to dig through the pile though, and the digging spread the pile around, need to re-pile it now. Yuck.

OK you get it, there's a tradeoff between the time it takes to organize your closet and the time it takes to find your clothes in there. Also hangars help with wrinkles.

What is clean code if not just keeping your closet organized, right?