This past weekend, my roommate took out the trash the morning before he went out of town for the long weekend (in the US). However, as he did so, the trash leaked a significant amount all around the entrance of our apartment which he claims he did not notice as he headed out. Neither myself or my other roommate were home at the time. It was a warm day in our city and as I returned at night from a full day of being out, I noticed a very off-putting odor in our apartment building - it smelled a bit like urine, litter boxes, feces, and decomposing trash. I opened the door to our apartment and was met with an unlovely surprise. There was brown liquid-like stains all over our floor and shoe rack, which was overshadowed by the worst odor I’ve ever come across to date. Based on the stains and smell, I genuinely thought someone had a bathroom emergency and was not able to make it to the toilet in time. The heat of the day only made matters worse as it baked the smell into the floor and infiltrated every corner of our apartment. (I cannot understate how awful the smell was - that night, I had to stay at a friends place as I aired out my own apartment because it truly smelled like a decomposing corpse had shit itself. Even now, a few days later, the smell persists lightly.) I reached out to my roommate who told me that it was caused by the trash leaking and that he was out of town for the next 2 days, leaving me to clean up the mess and figure out how to deodorize our entire apartment. As I cleaned, I noticed that the trash leakage also got onto my shoes leaving a huge stain on one of them. I tried to clean them but the smell and stain would not budge so I’m obliged to toss them. My roommate was apologetic about the whole situation, and I also understand this was more of a careless incident than an intentional crime. However, my shoes were caught in the crossfire, so I asked him to compensate. The shoes cost $150 and I only asked him to pay me back for half that cost ($75) because these were shoes that had been used. My roommate countered saying that we should explore less expensive options including him personally trying to clean the shoes (which Ive already attempted). AITA for asking for some financial compensation for my shoes?