Gender and Room Organization

I've been a Resident Assistant for three years here at Arkansas Tech University, and in this time I have noticed a variety of patterns. One of the more interesting patterns is the messiness of the room. About four times in a semester we are required to go to each residents' room to make sure there are not blatant policy violations. The pattern I have noticed during my time as an RA is actually the opposite from the one I expected to see. This pattern is that female rooms tend to be more messy and cluttered than male rooms.

I have attached two pictures, one of a female room and one of a male room from my friend group. The reason I chose to use pictures of my friends' rooms is because I thought it might be a bit strange to ask residents if I could take a picture of their room. The top picture is a typical example of a female room that I have inspected in the three years working as an RA, and the bottom picture is a typical male room.

My hypothesis about why this pattern exists is that female residents tend to bring more of their belongings to college with them than their male counterparts. The more stuff they bring the messier their rooms will appear due to the limited space of the rooms. Most males tend to be more on the conservative side of bringing things to college seeing it as just more stuff to bring back home later. Where female residents tend to want to bring more belongings to prepare for anything: clothes for every weather, mementos of friends, or decorative baubles. This is clearly apparent in the pictures below.