Putting things in the recycle bin will only free up space when they are permanently deleted from the recycle bin, was there an error telling you that the selected items were too large for the bin and they will be permanently deleted when you first moved them there (otherwise known as that little box that you didn't read properly and just clicked OK)
The full and empty recycle bin you can see in customise desktop is just showing you what the icon will look like for the bin in each state (you can change it if you want, and then right clicking and selecting restore default will change it back to the default picture)
So basically, you have deleted all your files. (you do have a backup of course, don't you?)