That little gem of an icon is your trash can. Duh. However, if you’re like me, you tend to either forget about the little guy sitting so quietly down there in your dock, your you neglect him. Shame, shame. If you manage it correctly, the trash can can either save your life (business, studies, school work, etc…) one day, or be your best friend in terms of freeing up some space on your hard drive.
When you delete a file on your Mac, either by dragging it onto the trash can and letting go or by using the shortcut key sequence (Apple + Delete), you’re not really trashing the file. What you are doing is moving the file from where ever it was, to the trash can with the purpose of eventually being deleted. You see, sometimes you might accidentally delete a file prematurely, then realize that you need it back. The good thing is that if you just go to your trash can, it’s right there waiting for you. All you need to do then is drag it out and put it where you want it to go. Simple huh? Or course it is. It’s a Mac. 
But there is one thing that you need to be cautious of. That is, you need to get in the practice of “taking out your trash”. That is emptying it. Once you do that, you will be able to reclaim some disk space. The downside is that, any files you put in there, are now gone. Forever. That is, unless you have backed up. But we’ll save that for a future post.
How To Empty Your Trash
1. Right-click (or CTRL+click) on the trash can
2. Choose “empty trash”
3. Confirm your decision