Edit: what the other guy said. I have a diver watch I just spin the dial to see how much time has passed since I started something. One time at the height of my Arduino hackery I didn't have a tea kettle and just boiled water in a sauce pan and said to my roommate, I bet I can shine a laser on the surface of the water to detect when it's boiling and make a noise, she laughs and says congrats you've invented a more complicated whistling kettle. Really humbling experience.
No, not at all. It's not really possible unless you're using an extremely basic washer with no spin (Or a very poor spin) cycle. A lot of the reason washers are terrible at estimating how long a wash cycle is going to be is because they spend a variable amount of time balancing the clothes before the spin cycle.