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Closets bulging with clothes and shoes. Plastic bins of stuff shoved under the bed. Stacks of mail covering the dining table. Has anyone seen the car keys?

It鈥檚 spring, time of rebirth and rejuvenation. Time to throw open the windows and do some spring cleaning. But the magnitude of the project is daunting. How to begin?

If you want to know why it鈥檚 so difficult to tackle a big project like spring cleaning, blame your brain, said Randall O鈥橰eilly, professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at CU Boulder. 听

鈥淭he brain is wired to be very cautious and conservative in starting big projects, because once you do start, it takes over your brain,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he brain, researchers think, is wired to track progress towards whatever it is you鈥檝e decided to do, like spring cleaning, which is hard work. You have to make a lot of difficult decisions and the outcome is uncertain. Your brain recognizes that and says, 鈥楳aybe I won鈥檛 start on that project after all.鈥� It鈥檚 an adaptive property of the brain.鈥�

Once we get over the initial stalling and begin the project, the brain rewards us with small hits of dopamine as we make progress. This provides an incentive to stick with the task.

Dopamine is a chemical released by neurons that sends signals to other nerve cells and plays a major role in both mood and reward-motivated behavior.

So, you鈥檝e tackled cleaning and decluttering and you鈥檙e making progress. And then you notice the teapot that belonged to your grandmother stored in the back of the cupboard. It鈥檚 sweet and dainty and evokes fond memories of your grandmother, but it鈥檚 not your style at all. Now you鈥檙e confronted with a dilemma: Keeping a teapot you never use is taking up much-needed space, but getting rid of it would feel disrespectful to your grandmother.听

鈥淭hings with an emotional attachment take on meaning,鈥� O鈥橰eilly said. 鈥淭he teapot is not just a teapot. It has a personal history, so it鈥檚 unique in that sense. If you get rid of the teapot, it feels sacrilegious. It鈥檚 valuable to you because it carries that authenticity and history with it, so it feels like you鈥檙e disrespecting that value.鈥�

One way to overcome that, O鈥橰eilly suggests, is to take a photo of the teapot so you have the memory of it. He has done that with his kids鈥� artwork. Their drawings show up on his computer鈥檚 random photo screensaver, so he can see them and appreciate them more than if they were packed away.

So, why do we accumulate clutter? The answer is found in the dopamine system, which is based on expectations. When we accumulate something or have a pleasurable experience, the brain releases dopamine and we feel good. As soon as our wants and desires are satisfied, however, the brain discounts that feel-good moment.

鈥淵ou can see mathematically that the brain is constantly comparing what we have versus what we expected to get,鈥� he said. 鈥淓very moment of our lives, that鈥檚 what our brain is doing. How much better is that movie versus what you thought it would be? How much better was that cookie than you remembered? Every single thing is being compared to a baseline of what your expectation is.鈥�

Attachments to things are like those expectations. We want them and feel that we need them. This is where it gets diabolical, O鈥橰eilly said. If something we like听is meeting our expectations, we no longer get a dopamine burst. Our brains are constantly trying to up the ante, so we continue to acquire more stuff to feel better.

To get the dopamine surge, the experience needs to be better than what you expected. If it just meets expectations, guess what? No dopamine for you! The flip to the reward of dopamine is a downer.

鈥淚f the experience was less than you expected, there鈥檚 actually a reduction in the firing of dopamine neurons, leaving you feeling disappointed,鈥� O鈥橰eilly said. 鈥淭hen the brain tries to come up with new ways to get the dopamine. It needs to be better than what you expected.

鈥淭he expectation system is what drives learning,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his system in our brains drives us forward, to learning more and more. You鈥檙e changing your expectation level, your sense of self. Don鈥檛 have attachments. Have ambition.鈥�

Why do we allow clutter to accumulate? O鈥橰eilly said it鈥檚 because we don鈥檛 want to make decisions about throwing things out. We think we might need that item someday. Blame the psychological effect called loss aversion. Humans are averse to losses. Our brain says, 鈥淚f we get rid of it, then we鈥檝e lost it.鈥�

Can the process of removing physical clutter help us release negative emotional attachments in our lives? O鈥橰eilly says there is a basic, intrinsic pleasure in increasing order.

O鈥橰eilly has found that people will organize things as a way to relax and pass the time. An example he finds noteworthy is walking down the aisle of an airplane and observing people playing solitaire on their laptops.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e sorting fake, digital cards on a laptop,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hy? I can鈥檛 think of a more meaningless activity鈥攕orting stacks of cards that aren鈥檛 even real cards. And yet we love to do it, because it鈥檚 satisfying to put things in their place.鈥�

鈥淭here鈥檚 so much to learn in psychology and neuroscience,鈥� O鈥橰eilly said. 鈥淭here are huge, deep, fascinating mysteries about how the brain works and we鈥檝e just started learning about them.鈥�