To deactivate my facebook account.

[Nattynar]

I know that obviously my Facebook page is public, but when it comes to family you can't really de-friend them can you! However PIL are friends on FB and every time they call, they mention oh you put such and such on FB. They must sit on it every damn day, I don't even post that often and try to not put anything too personal, but it is massively pissing me off.
I don't want them to have access to all the ins and outs of my personal life, it's enough that they stick their oar in all other aspects of my life. I just want to keep something out of their reach! So thinking the only thing I can do is deactivate the whole account!? DP thinks that I'm making a deal out of nothing!

Put them on your limited profile. Post something boring and non specific to your limited profile every now and again. Job done.

i customise all my fb posts, if its a pic of the dc's, i post it just so mil and my mum can see, they don't live nearby so its an easy way to keep them up to date, but its stuff i wouldn't want my complete friends list seeing.

If you mark a post "Only Me" then only add names of people you want to see the post, that works for only letting certain people see what you are up to. Just another option :)

So I go into settings and change my profile to limited?? Not very good with FB to be honest. I did have a look at it, but just didn't understand.

Yes, you can select what people see, as well as hiding them.
I'll often edit thing to my local area when it's of no interest to people further afield.

Put them on limited. Mine are.

So I set them as limited profile and they shouldn't see anything unless I change to limited profile when I post?

You can change your settings. In your privacy setting there's an option that says custom.
It will say 'show this post to my friends except....' then you just type in the names of the people you want to hide your updates from.
Make sure you hide all your family though as if they're round at each others houses they might wonder why there's updates appearing on Uncle Billy's wall but they can only see a blank wall.
You'd be rumbled.

On your friends list, go to the people you want to limit what they see, hold your mouse over FRIENDS, choose Add to another list, and select Restricted.
That means that they will only see posts that you make public.
Then change your profile to "Friends Only" ane keep most of your future posts "Friends only", just posting the occasional Public one so they can see that you still use it.

Fantastic, thank you all. I feel so much happier knowing they won't be able to see everything I post!