I've wondered the same thing, about how people exfoliate, when they do it, how they do it.

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I don't have any specific routine to create the exfoliation, it just happens when it wants to, and it does it on its own in the space of about a 15 minute period, every second night.

But only half the lip surface at a time exfoliates (in small bits and pieces), then 2 nights later the other 50% exfoliates (in small bits and pieces) like a patchwork across the lower lip.

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It sounds like some people here have developed techniques to cause their entire lip to exfoliate in a uniform way, and they do it before it flakes up on its own.

It sounds like this might be a better way of managing the appearance of the lips (how others see them in our daily lives).

But the way my lips are right now, it feels like it would be damaging and irritating to them for me to try to get off more skin than voluntarily comes off every second night in patches.

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I read once here where one guy soaks his lips in his bathtub water for 20 minutes before exfoliating them, so I sat with my lips in a bowl of warm sudsy water for 20 minutes to see if that would help anything, and it didn't! They were just waterlogged, white in places, and a bit flappy (where they'd already been flaking off), but the general surface of the skin was not about to allow me to move it, and I would have had to be forceful with it, which seemed counterproductive.