I have dry lips. My boyfriend has dry lips. My best friends has dry lips. One of my buds has eczema on his lips. I have shared these long hoarded secrets with them and they've all seen massive improvements. Today I'm gonna share them with you.

Drink up. Your lips are one of the first places to show and feel dehydration. Whenever your lips are starting to feel a little dry and chapped you should reach for your water bottle.

Don't over balm. Once every few hours is fine - don't reapply whenever the balm wears off; lip balm isn't always made to sit on your lips for hours and hours, it's designed to sink into your lips. Certain lip balms (medicated, menthol-y) contain addictives that keep you reaching for those tingly balms. Don't overuse them. Check out this article if you want to read more on lip balm addiction.

Exfoliate every now and then. There's an idea that lips naturally exfoliate every 28 days, but you don't want chapped lips for a month. I try to exfoliate them every other day, but usually it turns out to be twice a week. 

Oil-based balm, not wax. Wax balms are great for locking in moisture, not providing it. Balms like EOS or Burt's Bees should be applied after an oily balm to lock in that moisture. After all, what's that wax gonna keep in if there's nothing to keep in? Look for ingredients like shea butter, jojoba seed oil, honey, and glycerin. Petrolatum (aka petroleum jelly) is okay but you shouldn't rely entirely on it (meaning don't use Vaseline as a lip balm).

I've got a handful of products and things that are my favorite for dry lips. I know I've been tooting CO Bigelow's Rose Salve for some time now, but it hasn't even made the list because these are just so great.

Here I have a DIY lip scrub; I'll give you the recipe later, so read on for that. I also have two very wonderful lip balms, both from CO Bigelow. One is the Lemon Lip Balm - and I'm not sure if you know this about me but I f***ing love lemons - even the name is incredible. This sweet lemon lip balm melts into a more oily balm as soon as it's swiped onto the lips. It works to hydrate the lips and tastes amazing as well. The next balm is their aptly named My Favorite Night Balm, which is an "8 hour over night recovery." This thick balm applies scentfree, thickly, and smoothly. When I wake up in the morning I can still feel the balm on it; it's really good at repairing super dried and chapped lips.

So now onto the scrub. This is a really basic recipe; use equal parts of olive oil, coconut oil, honey, brown and white sugar (I have organic sugar which isn't white but no difference). Personally, I like my scrubs more solid than liquid, so I used more coconut oil than olive oil. Combine the ingredients in a jar or old lip balm pot, and there ya go!

Thanks for reading! Do you get chapped lips?