Digging for the Desktop

I wanted to look at my computer's desktop today and was surprised at how many windows I had to minimize before I reached it. Keeping lots of different programs open at the same time may not be the best idea, but it's a convenience-based habit I've developed. At any one time, I usually have open:
Three tabs in Chrome: two email accounts and Pandora
Steam (the platform I use for computer games)
iTunes (for podcasts, not music)
Two or three word documents, usually homework I'm in the process of doing
One wordpad document that contains my to-do list
One pdf in Adobe Reader, usually an application I'm working on
An MS paint or paint.net project I'm working on

It's worked out reasonably well so far.