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Whenever a cereal box is close to empty, you come up with all the crumbs that have settled to the bottom. When pouring that last bowl of cereal, I really prefer to get the cornflakes, not the cornstarch (OK, it's not really starch, but you know, the crumbs).
I have tried placing the box horizontally and slowly shaking, to try and get the bigger pieces' momentum to move them forwards more than the crumbs, but it still ended up full of crumbs.
How can I avoid the little bits?
You can run your cereal through a Colander first.
Image source: Wikipedia
This sieve lets the crumbs fall through the gaps, so you can keep the bigger bits of cereal for consumption.
If you don't want to buy a colander or have one sitting around, you can make your own quite easily!
The easiest way to make one would be to use the plastic bag that the cereal comes in. Simply punch a few small holes into the bottom of the bag (since it's the last part of the cereal the bag's condition doesn't matter) with a sharp object, a pen would work. I wouldn't recommend cutting holes in the bag because it'd be easy to make them too big to where the cereal is likely to slide out. However, while this is the most simple approach, it's likely not the most effective due to the flimsiness of the bag.
As such, it'd be better to use something a little more sturdy. If you wanted to make a serious colander, you could use a plastic bowl (preferably a thin one) and drill holes (or perhaps saw if you have the correct tools) into it but that's a good bit of work.
A much easier way would be to use a tin pan or something similar - it'd work great. Since it's more sturdy, you could cut or punch holes into it, which allows larger escapes for the crumbs while making them a size to keep the cereal in.
In any case, put the cereal in the colander you made and shake it around, particularly back and forth, trying to get the crumbs to go in the holes you made.
In addition to using a colander to filter out the crumbles, you could try making the storage place a little bit damper. When cereal dries up, small bits of it will chip off, but if the surrounding air is damp enough so that they don't dry up, there won't be as many crumbs generated. It's hard to control though. You could use the cookie-bread method where you put a piece of bread into a sac of cookies and they absorb extra moisture from the bread. Same should apply to cereal.
Remove bag from box rotate it 180 degrees. Place back in box and open package. The crumbs work their way to the bottom during shipping. The crumbs now on top will start to disperse from top to bottom.
