What does the expression «to scrape the bins» mean?
When you need to gather the few remaining supplies of something – whether resources, money or energy – that the time to “поскрести по сусекам” (“poskresti po susekam” or “to scrape the bins”).
In the Russian folk tale ‘Kolobok’, an old woman decides to bake bread. There's no flour left at all, so an old man advises her: "Scrape the barn, sweep the bins and perhaps you'll scrape together some flour." From what she gathered, she bakes a round loaf of bread – a ‘kolobok’.
Here, we need to figure out where the old woman actually went. Ambars or barns were used to store food and supplies for the winter, protecting them from bad weather and rodents. ‘Suseks’ or bins were special containers in such barns, where flour or grain was usually stored. Sometimes, they were used to store emergency provisions. When supplies were running low, there was one last chance: to scrape or search the cracks and bottoms of grain bins to collect what remained.
This expression migrated from peasant life into literary language and, later, became more widely used. "Scrape the bins" refers not only to the remaining grains of grain, but to any last reserves. An English equivalent would be: “To scrape the bottom of the barrel.”
