Want to keep your desktop clean, save for mounted drives? One way of achieving this, while keeping the benefits of having links to the Desktop function as normal, is to remove the Desktop altogether. Thanks to OS X's UNIX underpinnings, this is easy. Open a Terminal, and ... to keep what you already have on the desktop:
mkdir realDesktop
mv ~/Desktop/* realDesktop
And then delete the original Desktop:
rm -r Desktop
Finally, create a symbolic link to your new Desktop folder, called realDesktop:
ln -s realDesktop Desktop
This allows you to use your Desktop as normal from within applications, while maintaining a perfectly uncluttered view. Works well for me.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040329185854676