If you’re like, you probably don’t like having desktop icons on your desktop. I have a beautiful monitor and a really cool desktop background. I want my desktop to be clean and show off this awesome wallpaper I have chosen! Plus, it just feels nice to have an empty desktop. Yes, it’s easy to hide the Recycle Bin on Windows 7 using the ‘Personalize’ option when you right click your desktop. However, it’s inconvenient to totally hide the Recycle Bin and then let your hard drive fill up because you constantly forget to empty it! So, a nice solution would be to get the Recycle Bin down in the System Tray area. I’ve seen other guides online that make shortcuts, but the icon doesn’t change when it’s full or empty. My goal was to get it to function just like the icon on the desktop, but smaller and in the corner of the screen. Guess what, I got it! And here’s how:

Make sure that the Recycle Bin icon is on your desktop. To get to this dialog, right click on your desktop, click ‘Personalize’, then click ‘Change desktop icons.’ We will remove the Recycle Bin from the desktop at the end of this process. Unless you’d rather have it in both places… then you can skip that step.

Next, right click your desktop and create a New Folder. Name it whatever you like. I named it ‘Recycle Toolbar.’ After the icon is created on your desktop, right click it, cut it, and then paste it anywhere on your Local Drive. For example, I cut and pasted the Recycle Toolbar folder to “C:\windows\system32″ because I feel like this is a Windows feature. I do not need to stumble on it again in my personal files. But, you could also put it in your Documents folder, or wherever you feel comfortable. Just remember, wherever you put it, you have to be able to find it again.

Now, make sure your taskbar us not locked. To do this, right click the taskbar and make sure there is no checkmark next to ‘Lock the taskbar’

Now that the taskbar is unlocked you want to right click the taskbar again and go to Toolbar, then New Toolbar as shown in the picture above.

Remember how I said you would need to be able to find that folder again? Well, this is when you need to find it. Navigate your Local Disk to the Recycle Toolbar as depicted in the photo above and then ‘Select Folder.’

Your start menu should look like the picture above now.

Right click on the Recycle Toolbar and let’s configure how it looks! You probably want to remove the checkmarks next to ‘Show Text’ and ‘Show title.’ Also, most people seem to have Large Icons for their Start Menu since it’s set that way by default. So, you probably want to set it up like in the picture above with Large Icons. However, I use Small Icons for my Start Menu though, so in my case I used the Small Icons option. Play with it and find what looks right for you. All you have to do is right click it again to modify it

And there you have it! Your Recycle Bin is now on the system tray and should look like the picture above!

Now we can refer back to the first photo and remove the Recycle Bin from the desktop. To do this, right click on your desktop, click ‘Personalize’, then ‘Change desktop icons.’ This brings up the Dialog box with ‘Desktop icons’ that you can check or uncheck. Make your selections (in my case all of them are unchecked) and click ‘OK.’

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