Why do you think, that hardware wallets are a bad way to hold bitcoins?
They involve trust.
Where did you get your paper wallets from? Did you run someone else's code (even offline) to generate them? If you did, your paper wallets also involve trusting that coder's skills and motives.
The only way to completely eliminate trust is to write the wallet-generating code entirely by yourself (which then adds the possibility of compromising your security by not doing it right).
I use an ancient open-source HTML address-generating program. I forget what it's called. I'm too lazy to fire up my non-internet-capable PC to see.
My trust is mainly in trusting that some eagle-eyed coder would have spotted any shenanigans long ago. I generally trust open-source.