I use Onyx to delete naughty things that won't go away. It has a lot of goodies, like allowing you to resetting the links connecting files to programs, clearing mega-logs and caches, letting you set a custom log-in picture and message and Force Delete Trash. You get scary warnings before you do anything incredibly stupid but Ganbustein still got me out of a sticky place when I force deleted something that was on an external drive.
The only other thing I can think of is trying to designate through Word where it should keep the work files, then you don't have to see them at least. Or reinstall Word.
