First, Outliner has nothing to do with layers. It only shows components and groups and gives sort of textual idea about how the model is set up.
What is it about layers that you don’t like. Perhaps you don’t have a clear understanding of how layers are used in SketchUp? They have one purpose and that is to control visibility of entities. Unlinke other programs that use layers, layers in SketchUp do nothing to provide separation. You should make sure you are following the rules. Keep Layer 0 active at all times. Draw all edges and faces on Layer 0 and leave them associated with Layer 0. Only associate groups and components with other layers. And then use the layer visibility check boxes to control which layers are visible for a given scene.