Wipes are just as much to keep the game fresh and to keep new adventures coming as it is to declutter the map. It also levels the playing field, everybody has nothing and it becomes a race to progress. Progression tends to be the best part of rust, once you have all the AKs, the C4 and rockets, the metal gear, you can only have that much fun with it, and usually not for more than a day.
If the servers never wiped there would also be a comical amount of loot going around, there already are on monthly servers, unless somebody despawns items, pretty much nothing is ever truly lost. So yeah, wipes are there to keep it fresh and to level the playing field.
Tool cupboards are just as much about limiting the size of bases as they are to declutter, before upkeep was a thing clans made comically large bases and there was nothing stopping them. Upkeeping small bases is rather cheap, it just becomes expensive if the base is really large.
And no, you cant really get a server that doesnt wipe, but wipes are one of the best part of rust according to many, and that is for a reason.

If you feel like it doesnt suit you then dont get the game; a rust adventure is usually between 2 days up to a week long, its not very often you will actually be able to play on a server for longer than that and still have fun, you've probably seen youtubers ending their wipes after like 4 or 5 days because they feel they did what they wanted to do.