My house-mate recently gave his washing machine away, leaving our house without one. Since I'm sufficiently disorganised to get to the launderette often enough, this was causing me some worry.
The serendipity came when I was walking back from the launderette having got there too late to put my washing in and saw a washing machine sitting in the street about three doors down from me. It had a sign on saying “fully working order, free”, so with some help from a temporary house mate and his fiancé who were also feeling the lack of a washing machine fairly acutely, we carried it back to the house and plugged it in (and cleaned some gunk out of the little tray you put the powder in). Amazingly, it seemed to work.
It just goes to show that if you tackle life's little problems with a sufficiently relaxed attitude, it all works out in the end.