When my son fell ill recently, it rewrote the map of the world around us – and left us with a lot of important errands that took on a newly urgent dimension. And that’s not to mention the time constraints when all your free time is spent at the hospital.

So we turned to Angie’s List even more than usual to handle the small details, whether it be housecleaning or lawn mowing. It’s one thing to spring-clean and another thing entirely to scrub your house of germs, which is what we had to do since our two-year-old’s treatment temporarily wipes out his immune system.

Fortunately the good people of Custom Clean turned in a stellar job, cleansing every surface and even steam-cleaning the carpet to rid every possible source of contamination.

Equally useful was my longtime mechanic, the highly rated My Car Doc. Since even the van needed to be sanitized before my son could ride home in it, he made a “house call” to the hospital and sanitized the interior. And since security takes a dim view of people working on cars in their lot, the Car Doc took the van to his place to finish the job. You can’t ask for better service than that.

All this doesn’t directly impact my son’s health – but it makes an enormous difference in easing our minds about the little things and getting to focus on what’s really important.