Winter is upon us and so it’s time to crack out those cheap lipbalms and put one in each handbag, coat pocket and car glove compartment. We all do it, don’t we? Buy about seventy thousand chapsticks and instantly lose them down the back of the sofa/side of bed/kitchen drawer. But that is the beauty of the cheap lipbalm, surely? The fact that we can be so utterly flippant and frivolous about them – and the fact that they smell so good. Here’s my little roundup of my favourite flavoured cheapies for this winter:

Carmex Cherry (pictured above, £2.50 from ASOS) is really very cherry-y. You can’t beat original Carmex, the one in the little round tin, because that is simply the best of all time, but I couldn’t include that one because it doesn’t have that good, cheap synthetic smell that we’re looking for here. Carmex tubes also come in Strawberry, but I’m not so keen on that one, it has a slightly weird aftertaste. I prefer, by a cat’s whisker….

Strawberry ChapStick, £1.19, has to be the original, king-of-kings lipbalm. I remember carrying this to my first day of school – 25 years ago! Although I think that the tube may have been black… Whatever, ChapStick rules. It’s pretty light and non-greasy and you have to reapply it quite frequently, but that’s surely all part of the fun. My ultimate strawberry-flavoured balm, however, has to be…

…ELF’s Strawberry Creme lip treatment. It’s ultra-moisturising and leaves a lovely pale pink sheen on the lips, it smells exactly like Strawberry Milkshake from McDonald’s and it costs £1.50. Although this doesn’t give a shine, it does give a colour and so it moves slightly onto the ‘cosmetic’ balm category, as does….

..Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula Dark Chocolate & Peppermint Lip Butter (£1.99). Smell’s exactly like After Eights, but only for a few minutes before it wears off. Don’t know how on earth it ever got the name ‘butter’ because it has a consistency that’s nothing like butter I’ve ever seen! Nevertheless, I like it a lot – it is more of a moisturising gloss than a balm, so if you want a 2-in-1 product that gives a nice sheen as well as moisturising, this is a good ‘un.

Finally, Miners ‘Sweetlips’ in ‘Blancmange’ is, indeed, sweet. It’s a gloss, but it’s not at all sticky, and I find it quite moisturising which is why it’s here in my Lipbalm post! The smell of this gloss-balm is in-your-face bubblegum and I love it. It’s not apologetic about it’s origins; it screams pick ‘n mix and E numbers, and it’s exactly how Barbie’s breath would smell. If, indeed, she had breath. Sweetlips is the most expensive of the lot at £2.99 but still, it hardly breaks the bank, does it?

There you go then, some of my favourite lip treatments for winter – go forth to purchase and immediately lose, only to find again once Spring is stretching out her sleepy limbs.