The Non-Consumer Advocate blog has a companion Facebook group with more than 7,000 members. It’s a great place to bring ideas, ask questions and expand the non-consumer community. It’s open to all and is an extremely active space to hang out. It brings together diverse discussions that are 99% amazing.
But oh . . . that 1%!
It’s not that big of a deal though, as someone is bound to tag me in any inappropriate threads so they can be dealt with. I moderate the group with an eye of keeping it respectful. You know, because we’re all adults.
This morning a new member decided to rant against the group, and it was a few hours before I had a chance to sit down at the computer. At that point a number of group members were upset enough to leave. I wrote a little something that I’d like to share here as well:
Here’s a shout out to everyone who works to make The Non-Consumer Advocate a positive, helpful, non-judgmental and safe place to share ideas and inspiration.
With more than 7,000 members, we are a varied group. We come from different backgrounds, countries and cultures. But we can all respect one another’s perspectives.
I have learned so much from everyone here, and I welcome those who bring a respectful mindset to the group.
As much as readers have shared that they find ideas and inspiration from The Non-Consumer Advocate, it goes both ways. I find constant inspiration and fantastic ideas from you, my blog readers.
So thank you, dear readers. You mean everything to me.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
My favorite group by far on FB.
I need a banner that says “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
Love, love, love that sentence!
Thank you Katy.
A banner made from used up and worn out sheets? 😉
Yeah…asking for a tee shirt wouldn’t work well, eh? 😉
I love your Facebook group. I am sorry about the 1%, I guess we will always have them. Hopefully those that left will reconsider and be back. They should know after reading the comments that mold can be cut off of cheese and everything will be just fine.
Ha, great analogy!
I don’t do Facebook, or else I’d be there! Sorry to hear there was discord on the site. Blech. Let’s be adults, people!
Another Non-Facebook Advocate here (with my apologies, Katy). It’s sad that people think they can just say anything they want on the internet, because there’s no one watching them. Which is so.very.illogical when you think about it. Sorry for the nastiness. It’s great that you understand that they are the tiniest of minorities, but sometimes the sticks and stones do sting, even if they don’t hurt you long term.
+3 on the cheese analogy!
Thank YOU, dear Katy, for keeping the blog open for those of us who won’t touch Facebook with a 10-foot pole. (I have several reasons, but the situation you describe illustrates a major one.)
And I greatly admire the positive nature of your response on FB; I’ve found in “real life” that positivity is the only way to respond to nastiness.
I knew the thread took an evil turn as soon as he attacked Katy’s beloved Tillamook cheese!
What? I missed that!
It was something like – buying 12 pounds of cheese just because it’s on sale is not non consumer. All I could picture was your beautiful blocks of cheese in your fridge!
I’m choosing local high quality delicious food that supports my community. I choose to buy it when it’s $4.99 instead of when it’s $9. It just makes sense!
Now I’m envisioning big blocks of beautiful cheese … glad I missed the drama. I’m not as NC as I can be, but I love the group and I really like the way that the discussions have broadened my thinking.
PS – When cheese was on sale recently (alas – Kraft, not Tillamook), I bought about eight pounds of it. It was too cheap to pass up and it was supposedly “aged.”
PS 2 – It was tasty.
Mmm, cheese! It never goes to waste in our house.
I must live a wicked life – my favorite cheese never goes on sale – it is about $6/pound. but it is really really good, and I just eat a sliver at a time. cuz I am a non consumer, and I use things sparingly!!!
I missed the rude conversation also. I just bought quite a bit of cheese for 1.99/lb at Sprouts. Can it be frozen?
It was I who wrote the post this morning. The discussion at the end is what I hoped to achieve. I am truly sorry to everyone that I offended in the writing of that post.
Thank you for posting this here Katy.
I was once a member of the online facebook group. But I left a while ago due to other people….I couldn’t take some of their complaints, gripes, and negativity. I come to the blog daily though to get my fix and read the comments here.
It’s wonderful that you offer multiple options for people to get their TNCA fix 🙂
I left awhile ago too. I almost wrote to you to explain why I felt the need to quit, but realized many people like it there. I like it here, it’s serious and more thoughtful for me.
I left about a year ago too, for a lot of the same reasons. Happy with just the blog now.
me too…
Katy, I love your blog and fb page, and it looks like many, many others do, too. I discovered it maybe a month ago, but I’m hooked. It’s hard to find like minded people near me, and I’m happy to have stumbled onto this blog. Self-righteousness is so not cool at all. Positive change can happen if we stick together instead of tearing each other down.
Sorry about the negativity .you work hard to post informative info and I have gleaned a lot from your fb group. The person that commented should realize that not everyone can bike due to health or weather or where they live. I live on a one hundred acre farm and we grow a lot of our own food..we freeze and we can..we recycle..we spend wisely because farm income is tight. No matter how you live everyone has to buy now and then whether new or used it is up to us to be wise consumers. Everyone here is on the path some further along than others but we are all learning from each other!!
Deborah, that’s a great point that not every person is non-consumer in the same way. I would be killed if I tried to bike to work! Oh, I could move closer to work if I wanted to pay $3000/month for rent, but THAT would be silly now, wouldn’t it?
I’m not on Facebook, for many reasons. It sounds like you responded calmly and appropriately, Katy. I don’t think *I* could have been so adult in that situation. See? Another reason I am not, and should not, be on Facebook.
Also, sounds like this person was a cheese hater, which just doesn’t fly with me. Cheese, Gromit! 🙂
“Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese…” 🙂
I love Wallace and Gromit!
Ahhhhhhhh…. Facebook! Cancelled my account many months ago, not missing it one bit!! People can be so rude and self-entitled. Keep up the good work and try to ignore people who have so little excitement in their life that they feel the need to create some.
And keep posting here for your non-FB readers! ☺
I missed the controversy, but will live thru it. I can get kinda the gist of what the person must have been saying, glad he left rather than stick around and continue to harass ppl. I am glad this group is accepting of differences between others about what it means to be a non consumer. I was involved with horses for years, and you never met such a group of people more convinced that their ways are better than anyone else’s than horse people. It really is exhausting, and one reason I got out of it.
I saw some of the controversy, but I skipped over the responses. There were too many issues like that in the past that I chose to skip over too. I’m not on FB to revisit drama that I have to live through every day. I’m trying to be drama-free!
And like other said I love my daily dose of Katy. I get great ideas from the people on FB, but if there is drama or doesn’t pertain to anything I can related to, I skip over it.
Yeah for Katy and her cheese!!!!
Another Non-Facebook Advocate here (love that term, btw) who really likes this blog and the commenters. Glad the drama stayed over there and didn’t appear here!
We are all doing what works for our families and trying to do better, I think. What do I for mine doesn’t look like what Katy does for hers and that’s fine. We can all learn from one another and keep ideas in mind for when our circumstances change. Sanctimonious, self-satisfied and know-it-alls should create their own blogs/pages and curate their own content there.
I’ve always assumed that the reason your blog and fb page are called The Non-Consumer Advocate mostly had to do with the fact that you’re a member of The Compact. No? I’m on fb so rarely I keep meaning to shut down my account, so I didn’t see the brouhaha. But if The Compact really is central to what you mean by non-consumer, would it help to occasionally reiterate it for people like the 1% ? Of course, it’s also possible that folks like that will find something to kvetch about no matter what.
Whatever you do, please don’t ever suspend the blog. As you can see, there are A LOT of us who don’t facebook.
I left the fb group after posting a comment that indicated I didn’t appreciate the graphic nature of the string about diva cups. The response to my comment was pretty nasty.
Thankfully, Katy accepted me back when I recently requested to join.
However, I must say I prefer the discussion here at the blog.
I’m another non facebook user. I love your blog though. Sorry to hear about the nastiness. Being nasty and hateful truly consumes so much energy and eats you up inside. My mother in law gave me a beautiful book about being kind. Maybe she thought I needed it. I can’t remember the name, but so worth reading.
ruthie,
some cheeses freeze very well. others, like cheddar get crumbly. you just have to try freezing a smallish amount of the kind you want to use. also, I have found that shredding cheddar and then freezing works better. it also lets me remove just the amount I want from the freezer. if I arrange the shreds on, say, the burger I’m cooking and melt it, the crumbly-ness doesn’t cause any problems. putting a frozen slice on a sandwich would make the texture change apparent.
Non Facebook here as well. I so, so appreciate this blog! I hate that people feel free to get BAD on Facebook, which is one of the reasons why I’ve never been on it.
Keep up the good work, Katy! I don’t always agree with everything I read in the comments here, naturally, but we can all just agree that we don’t always agree!
I love the blog but only read the Facebook group when something catches my eye. Some of the FB participants can get judgmental and condescending and I am not interested in putting up with that. Katy, I enjoy your writing voice and it is fun for me to read about your fixer upper house and living in a walkable city neighborhood. Both those things were a part of my life in the past, but now I’m in the Seattle eastside ‘burbs. It’s sort of a what-might-have-been if we had zigged instead of zagged at a juncture of our lives.
I’ve also been reading here for years, but I don’t go to “the facebook.” When it comes to this type of controversy, my mom always says “make like a duck” as in… let it roll off your back! 🙂
I left the Facebook group long ago. Had nothing to do with how I feel about this awesome blog, of course. Most of the time I enjoyed it, especially early on. But it seemed like there was a lot of one-upping each other on what was ‘truly’ frugal. And, like most Facebook groups, there were posts that just serve to push the moderate voices out. There’s not much that can be done about it as it is the way we often are with one another.