[pkaeding]

Yeah, I think if you mindlessly do anything, you're gonna have a bad time.

Think of the cleanup branch as a running list of changes that you know you will need to make to remove the flag. Any future references to the flag should keep this cleanup list in mind. Code reviewers should keep these cleanup lists in mind.

This list of cleanup tasks happens to be expressed as a branch in your VCS (this is a pretty good way to express changes that need to be applied to a codebase). You will still need to be careful when you execute that list, but it will be helpful to have the running tally of things that need to be done.