FBW - I certainly remember the "god old days" without a recycle bin. I used to have a facility (part of Norton Utilities) to "undelete" files every time I got to "damn, I deleted that document yesterday and now I need to refer back to it"!
And it wasn't nearly as reliable as the Recycle Bin!
I usually clean mine out every few weeks, and leave the most recently "binned" in there in case I find that I really didn't want to delete it!