I have heard stories, "tales" if you so choose, of people with clean desktops on their computer. After years of experience on computers, I know this is a preposterous proposal. But recently, after filling up the 200GB hard drive of my MacBook Pro with random documents and web clippings, I decided it was time to investigate the possibility of such a place.
I started at the beginning, a very good place to start. It seemed logical to go through everything on my desktop and sort it into the correct folders within my system. BUT, I was a little too busy to do that when I was thinking of it. So i just put everything into a "Desktop Crap" folder. Surprisingly, within a week it was all full of files again.
I am currently trying out a little App called Hazel. It is pretty sweet, as it looks at whatever lands on my desktop and, according to rules I configure, it will sort the files automatically. It also dumps anything in my trash for more than a week, and sets a limit on the size of my trashcan. Now if I could get it to do my dishes.