may i suggest a program that might help with your icon clutter problem?
google search "stardock fences" and download the fences program. it lets you create groups (fences) around icons to organize (i group under names like games, school, benchmark, misc, etc). also, if you double click an empty area of the desktop it hides all your icons so your desktop looks clean (double click again to make the icons reappear)
just a suggestion, in case you didn't know about it already. and for anyone else who likes a clean desktop but also likes to have all their shortcuts on their desktop without using something like rocketdock