Every winter I have a treacherous and at times painful battle trying to keep my lips moisturized. The mixture of the temperature changes from super cold outside to warm inside along with the dryness in the air causes my lips to be chapped CONSTANTLY. I also work in a mall where it is super duper dry all year round but it’s significantly worse during the snowy months (I live in Canada, it’s a lot of months). Here are 5 things I have found to really help me look like I haven’t been in a desert all week.

1. Drinking enough water. Now I know this one is obvious to everyone but sometimes I forget to drink enough water. Especially at work, and once I’m dehydrated it just goes downhill from there. Luckily I’ve gotten the hang of setting myself up for success in this regard even if it gets super busy at work. I bought a reusable water bottle that I LOVE (see post here), AND, what’s even more exciting is that the mall I work at FINALLY got a hydration station so I can refill my bottle with filtered water and not gross mall tap water.
2. Finding a good chapstick. I’ve tried stuff from Shoppers Drug Mart and I just wasn’t finding anything that actually helped. One day I was in Sephora and I told the lady that I worked in the mall and my lips were always super dry and that I needed something, anything that would help. She suggested the Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment and viola! It’s the only thing I’ll buy now.
3. Use that coconut oil baby! Liberally. Coconut oil is really good for your skin and hair and lip skin is no different! Every so often I’ll make sure I really work it in so that my lips feel like they’re in hydration heaven.
4. Overnight lip mask. There was one time I went into Sephora to grab more of the Honey lip stuff and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m one of those shoppers who’s fairly direct and I just want to get in and get out as fast as possible so I ended up asking someone where the Honey stuff was. I also don’t usually have patience for being upsold to but in this case the advice I got was totally worth the extra money I ended up spending. It’s a small container of LANEIGE lip sleeping mask and it’s wonderful! A little bit goes a long way. I bought this stuff at least 6 months ago and I use it every night I’ve barely made a dent. This stuff stays on so that I don’t end up licking my lips all night making them worse.
5. Lip scrub. When your lips are dry and peeling sometimes it’s nice to sort of start fresh and get rid of that dead skin and lip scrubs are really handy in this department. You can buy lips scrubs or make them (I tend to just mix coconut oil and sugar).

What do you use to help combat dry lips during the winter? I’d really love to hear from you on what sort of things you find handy so feel free to comment!