On Friday I found this book Arranging Things which mirrors an incredible amount of my essay (but probably articulating ideas a lot better than me). If only I'd found this earlier. It's still great to clarify and validate a lot of what I've been thinking. Some excerpts below (I've bolded the parts which especially connect with my theories and "room-snoop" experiment):

Arranging things has two aspects: (1) the selection of objects - things - and (2) the manner in which the objects are arranged. Arranging things in both the commerical and non-commercial realms have this in common: arrangements always communicate something.* An arrangement of things is not just an aesthetic expression; it is a communicational act.

In many cases arrangement is language-like... Though the domain of arranging things is not nearly systematic enough to qualify as a bona-fide language, it is systematic enough to a degree. Communication systems, like natural languages, grow and develop through perpetual use and experimentation.

Rhetoric, as Aristotle wrote, is "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." All communication is rhetorical, to some degree. If you're not attempting to get someone to see, feel, think or act in a particular manner, why bother communicating at all? Anyone who communicates today is profoundly influenced by rhetoric. As communicators we incessantly make choices regarding which words, phrases, images and/or sounds to use based on rhetorical considerations - albeit not always consciously.

*The author notes that "communicating something" means transmitting meaning - any kind of meaning - to the arrangement's viewers, or, in a self-reflective way, back to the arranger her/himself. In my experiment I also considered that the manner of our possession-keeping might simply be a self-validating message addressing our self-identity.