Using Description-Detailing a Person, Place, or Thing

Description
It is the recipe for a great narrative. Your job is to make the story a mind movie for your reader.  
Many of you said it best on an edmodo post when I asked the question:  What is reading?

                                      Carter:
                                       You want to be in the book picture in your mind what the setting of the place look like or                                                          what the characters look like.

Now how do we do that?

Detail a Person, Place, or Thing

Use detail to describe "select" people, places, or things.  Select means you need to be selective.  Not every item should be detailed, your job is to find the right part to detail and move the story along.  Other parts should be simply stated.  You must think about your story and select parts to detail.

For example:

I can't believe how messy my daughter's room is.  Her clothes are all over the room, but at least they are clean.

Let's turn that into a detail:

I can't believe how messy my daughter's room is.  Her dresser is piled with clothes: jeans, sweatshirts, socks, and belts all thrown on top of each other.  A blue T-Shirt hangs from the hidden white dresser drawer, a flowered scarf partially covers her jewelry box.  I cannot see the floor so tiptoe on top of her pillows, careful not to dirty them with my shoes.  I remember neatly folding those clothes and stacking them in her hot pink laundry basket. That was only yesterday.

How are two pieces above different?
Why would you need to be select when choosing a detail to describe?

*Ideas taken from Gretchen Owocki's book The Common Core Writing Book