My best advice is spring cleaning… but you could always just put your stuff into a folder(s), and have that on the desktop…
But there are platform specific alternatives:
On windows:
You can change their attributes to hidden, and then make sure you have “view hidden files and folders” toggled off in ‘Folder Preferences’ (under tools in an explorer window in XP; Organize button of the context bar in a Vista explorer window).
Get Fences. I use this. It’s freaking brilliant.
On a Mac:
change the filenames of all of your items to have a period in front of it. (zB thing.rtf would become .thing.rtf
BE SURE THAT YOU WANT TO HIDE THINGS WITH THIS METHOD. THE ONLY WAY TO RETRIVE THEM BACK TO PLAIN VIEW IS TO RENAME THEM ON THE TERMINAL WITH SUDO!!!!