What does Spring mean to you? Is it a time to sweep your life (and home) clean? To get back in touch with nature after a long winter? To yell 'out with the old and in with the new!' as you rejuvenate your wardrobe? A time to finally plant your own food? Or simply a time when you need to pay closer attention to the weather forecast before planning an outing?

Whatever the new season has in store for you, we've got a few apps that can help you navigate it.

Spring cleaning

SweepSouth: Go to SweepSouth to book a professional cleaner – or even a team of cleaners. Aside from offering thoroughly vetted, professional and fully equipped cleaners from a mere R38/hour, SweepSouth is helping to create jobs. The cleaners are fairly compensated for their labour and can come to rely on regular income. So not only do you get a clean house, you also get to help someone else in the process. You can even ask the cleaners to bring their own products (for a nominal fee).

SweepSouth is available in Cape Town, Centurion, Joburg and Pretoria.

Domestly: Offering a similar service to SweepSouth, Domestly has created jobs for over 600 people in the two years since it launched, and won several awards. 

Domestly is currently available in Joburg and Cape Town.

Gardening

Babylonstoren: One of the most beautiful and progressive farms in the Western Cape recently released its own gardening app, which gives beginners and seasoned gardeners alike access to a gardening community, an extensive plant database and practical information about growing specific plants in your area.

Check it out here.

FarmBot: This is about as high-tech as gardening gets. FarmBot is exactly what it sounds like: a robot that farms. But it's pitched at urbanites who want to grow their own food but don't have the time, space or expertise to do so (but small-scale commercial farmers can benefit too). It is literally a robot that you control remotely to do all the planting, watering, weeding and maintenance your crops will need. All of the software for FarmBot is open source, so you can get instructions on how to build one of your own (though there are a few parts that come standard that you'll have to buy), or you can pre-order one ready-made. The technology is completely scalable - perfect for whether you plan to get growing in a tiny planter box on your balcony or want to convert your entire garden into a field for your crops. You can control and programme FarmBot from any device, and the video-game-style interface makes farming feel fun. All you need is a planter bed, water, electricity and the internet. 

Read more about FarmBot here.

Fashion

Spree: Love clothes but don't have time to hit the malls? Spree gives you access to top SA designers and over 500 international and local brands, right on your home screen. Its search and sort functions are highly effective, so you will find what you need in no time. Check-out is really quick, and you get free delivery on orders over R250. 

Go here to download Spree.

Superbalist: Superbalist is one of South Africa’s hippest online retailers. The app offers three main categories: ‘Men’, ‘Apartment’ and ‘Women’. All of the features of the full-scale Superbalist website are replicated in the app, and while it’s not quite as easy to browse large categories of products as it is on a laptop, if you have an idea of what you'd like your warm-weather wardrobe to contain, it's a perfect substitute. It's also got a very hip Apartment section that will inject some energy and new life into your living space.

Superbalist is downloadable here.

Weather

Swackett: Known as 'the thinking person's weather app', Swackett interprets weather data to give you wardrobe suggestions for the day - perfect for the time of year when the weather can be a bit iffy. With cute and fun graphics, it's a fresh approach to the traditional weather report. 

iOS and Android apps are available, as well as a web version here. 

Note that while these apps may be free to download, the data to do so is not. But luckily for you, buying data using My Vodacom is affordable, quick and so easy to do. Simply login to My Vodacom here »