Here's how to make your trash can as accessible and manageable as every other folder in the Sidebar. Show invisible files in the Finder by your preferred method -- I use MainMenu -- and then just drag the invisible ".Trash" folder in your User directory to the Sidebar.
Now turn off the show invisibles feature, and the trash will remain visible, and forever after make life on a Mac so much easier.
[robg adds: An easy way to show/hide hidden files is via this simple Terminal command. (Change YES to NO to hide the hidden files again, and use your favorite method of restarting the Finder to make the changes take effect.). Note that this Sidebar trash will only display those items in the trash from your boot drive; if you have more than one hard drive or partition, those volumes will have their own trashes.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080621162506717