Everything else came together fairly quickly. Cleanser, moisturizer, the basics, I found things that worked and moved on. But lip balm kept defeating me and I could not understand why. Every clean formula I tried either felt like I was applying a candle to my face or wore off so fast it was pointless. I went through probably twelve different ones over about eight months and my lips were still dry and unhappy the entire time.
What I eventually figured out was that I had been picking things based on the clean label without actually understanding what my lips needed from a formula. There is a big difference between something that sits on top of your lips and something that actually supports the skin barrier underneath. Most of what I was buying was the first thing.
I spent one evening properly reading about ingredients, what beeswax actually does versus petroleum, why some formulas cause dependency over time, how application timing matters more than most people realize. Came out of it with a completely different approach and found something that actually worked within about two weeks. My lips have been consistently fine since and I genuinely cannot remember the last time I thought about them which is the whole point.
If you are struggling with clean lip balm specifically I would say the ingredient research is worth doing before the next purchase rather than after.