> I've got a 9GB /root with a little over 6GB used. I've not installed
> *that* much at this point other than the gnome and kde meta-packages.
> However, I ran 'make' only in these directories (no 'make-install'
> needed???) but never a cleaning option.

"make install" is implied for the dependencies.

> Perhaps this could account for the large amount of disk spaced being
> used. If so, what's the 'best' method to go back and clean to free up
> more disk space?

Disk space is probably used up from many work directories.

Please see the pkgsrc Guide at 
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/pkgsrc/build.html#build.clean

  Once you're finished with a package, you can clean the work directory 
  by running "make clean". If you want to clean the work directories of 
  all dependencies too, use "make clean-depends".